Shooter Monthly #2: Call of Duty Flops, Battlefield Hops, and Arc Raiders Pops

I'm admitting my apology for thinking Call of Duty would beat Battlefield this year. What I'm looking for is an apology about the extraction shooter genre and how it is the future of shooters. Okay, Arc Raiders is proving it.
I think this is going to be very good cuz we're both about to eat Equal Crow.
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. The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for the time. There's
one more thing over Battlefield. I've got a chainsaw. I had to fight [music] programming mods. They're building their own levels in 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 they take time. [music]

Shooter monthly episode 2. We are back after a very eventful episode 1 covered by the mainstream press already making waves. It is the podcast that is never out of bullets. Unfortunately, Mr. Chris Anos is not with us today. He will be back for episode 3. But in their place, I have two returning co-hosts. To my right, our other favorite Chris, Mr. Chris sides. Chris, how are you?
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Thanks for asking.
Uh, have you recovered from the IGN videoameout.com?
As the former Bungie director, I've I've been able to make it through. It's been all right.
And Mr. Feras, how are you?
I'm good. I'm enjoying flying under the radar and not making headlines.
[laughter]
Maybe we'll change that.
Well, I I would say Chris, you achieved something that I have been trying to achieve my whole life, which is getting cancelled by Reddit. And so, if the mainstream press are still listening, I

have prepared a series of headlines that they are free to run with. Former dice economist says cosmetic prices should 2x. Former dice economist says failing to implement skill-based matchmaking is stupider than taking dev advice from Reddit. former DICE economist says the $300 Tarov edition didn't go far enough. So, if you are looking for quotes, ladies and gentlemen, just reach out to us. You don't need to publish anything without us being able to add a little bit more spice. So, don't hesitate IGN. But other than that, we have even more spicy news to cover. Let's start with the biggest flop of it seems like the year, which is Black Ops 7. And just to get a start on Black Ops 7's flop, EO Game Business is reporting that Black Ops 7's European launch saw opening week sales down 63% compared with the Blockbuster Battlefield 6 launch during the equivalent period. And we're also seeing that Black Ops 7 is down by more than 50% from Black Ops 6. What the hell

is going on to Call of Duty? I will predict Microsoft's response. They'll say that Game Pass sales like Pass players aren't included in this data. That would be my assumption, but I'm pretty surprised. Like I will be wrong here. I'm pretty sure last time I said that like Call of Duty would still uh beat out Battlefield from a player count perspective. Um, and I I don't know if I live in my own bubble or something where I don't see it, but I swear their marketing campaign for Black Ops 7 was not nearly as aggressive as prior ones. And I don't know if that was like a strategic choice, if they saw the writing on the wall of like the game wasn't going to do well, so they wanted to save a marketing budget or if I'm just if I if it was out there and I just didn't see it, but I do feel like their marketing this time around was extremely weak. Like when it launched, I was like, "Oh yeah, I did launch it today." Like I kind of forgot about it compared to like knowing like, "Oh, on November 15th or whatever it's coming out." Um, that could just be me though. I'm unsure. I'm not sure if anybody else like experienced that.
No, I feel I agree with you about the marketing. I don't feel like usually

it's everywhere and this time around I had like actually to literally Google it like a couple of times like when is Call of Duty released here. It's it's not it's not what it's used to be. Um I feel obviously there's a lot of factors that contribute to this but there's this always weird thing about whenever Call of Duty goes a little bit futuristic. This just happens like I I don't think they maybe they should just stop doing futuristic Call of Duties cuz I I don't think this will ever fly. Not to mention like everything that was going on with uh there was a bit of fatigue with what's going on with the skins and the u latest Call of Duty all the sort of stuff. But I really feel if they had not gone so far into the future or the campaign was also a bit stronger. Uh I've uh I've read a lot of comments about the campaign read the summary of the campaign and it doesn't seem like a strong COD uh campaign combined with the successes of like both Battlefield 6 being huge and Arc Raiders bringing something new. I think it was a perfect storm. It was interesting actually from the outside thinking like our creat is

sandwiched between Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty similar to maybe like what happened with Titanfall. It was sandwiched between Battlefield and COD and I was like oh yeah it was an amazing game. Titanfall was really good but it was sandwiched between those two giants and I was like it's really interesting that Arcade is releasing in between them but u yeah maybe Arcus 6S as well took some wind under the wings of COD this year. I would like to believe it was more arc raiders in Battlefield with my extraction bias, but I it had to have some impact on the market. Not only not only just from like a sales perspective, but if you looked at like traditional well traditional more modern-day marketing tactics of using content creators, they're all playing Arc Raiders. A lot of those pe a lot of the traditional I mean, you have Nadeshot and you have Nick Merks playing Arc Raiders. Yeah, they were paid to do their like promo for COD, right? but in their free time they're playing Arc Raiders which I think is a pretty kind of like a subtle hint I think at what this kind of version of COD is doing or this year's COD is doing.
Yeah, I agree with that. I think like there's other factor. I think Ubisoft

was just like talking about this how but it's also stuff we all know like players are buying less and less games on average the number of games the players are buying per year is lower and if you're really into shooters you just bought BF6 it's really huge this year there's a good chance you're not buying COD combine that with it being on Game Pass which as you said is going to be the Microsoft answer because it's to some degree a viable answer. I think you get this. But you know the good the interesting thing about CO there's always a new COD next year. So they could really turn this around fast like in n months or so. So that would be interesting to see.
Yeah. I don't think you can count ever really count Call of Duty out. But this is definitely like you know this is definitely a wound that they'll be feeling.
Well, where are my apologies?
I already apologized. I I said I was wrong. So I think the marketing question is pretty interesting and this is something that Jen had brought up on deconstructor of fun which is looking at the Google search trends. Now normally I'm against Google search trends because people use them incorrectly because when you look

at the index it's indexing to the own terms. So when you see 100 here for Black Ops 6, Call of Duty is always benchmarking it against that 100. So you got to be careful on how you use these indexes. But as a I would say rational estimate, it's pretty clear that Black Ops 7 did not have the same attention capture as the previous Battlefields. And we're having some early data from Sensor Tower, which I think will be coming out soon, that the marketing spend for Black Ops 7 was also significantly down. But the question I keep coming back to is we know the game critically is not as successful as the previous entries. It feels like the rational thing to do to pull back on marketing spend. you know, the old leaky bucket problem. If you're not able to acquire users profitably, don't acquire them. And not only that, it feels like, you know, if we were to use mobile terminology, cost per install skyrocketed because you have Arc Raiders and you have Battlefield 6, which I think just sucks the air out of the room. Just like completely stole any Thunder that Call of Duty would have had. So, yes, they may have spent less,

but it felt like that may be the right choice here. They would have had to pay higher cost per install. Yeah, I I I kind of agree that like maybe that was their strategy where it was like it's just too much this year. Like let's write this one out. It feels like that feels too simple of an answer to be fair. Um but there there does seem to be something there that there was some conversations around marketing budget and cutting it for some odd reason. What that reason is, I'm unsure. It could be the competition and and rise in CPIs. Um, or it could be that they felt that Black Ops 7 wasn't ready to like they didn't want to market it as well cuz internally they didn't feel like it was going to be that great. I'm not sure.
I'm not I'm not sure the strong impact on this but um and maybe you guys can correct me if I'm wrong. And it also says that in this Call of Duty they're not the skins are not carrying forward from their previous Call of Duties which they've been doing that for a long time. So maybe the players that put a lot of u money into the game right now is like this is a big churn point. they're starting somewhat from scratch. I I don't think the skins enough are to

cause this. Like obviously as you guys mentioned the marketing spend, strong battlefield, a lot of reasons, but I'm sure this did not help as well. If you're invested in the game, we're telling you all of the previous visitors not carrying forward. It's a natural chairpoint, but I need to investigate the amount of like skins not moving forward. But from my understanding is they they said it publicly. They're kind of doing a reset on that, too. There goes my Nicki Minaj skin. Um, rest in peace, my sweet child. I would say I'd also like to open the SPMM, the skill-based matchmaking debate, because that was another interesting choice that I think has draw some controversy. So, if you remember, skill-based matchmaking is simply the idea that you're going to pair players of similar skill into the same match or you're going to use skill as a significant factor. And so, in Black Ops 7, they decided to divide skill-based matchmaking into two different playlist types. The first is open and open had a small consideration of skill. So again, it wasn't wiped, but skill was much smaller of a factor when figuring out who they should pair you

with. And then they have standard in which skill matters quite a bit. And so me as an economist, like this sounds like a classic lemon problem where if you give people the choice, they're going to choose the one in which they're better off. And so all of the shitty players are going to go to the one in which skill is an important factor because they're not going to get stomped. Meanwhile, all of the uh the sweaties are going to go into open. But I I don't understand why this is a big controversy. If you're a developer, it's obviously you should use skill-based matchmaking. It's retention LTV positive. I I don't know. Is there any other argument opposing this other than a small minority of Redditors getting angry?
The the argument that I've had against skill-based matchmaking is that and this is more this is this is like at a like operation level is like if you don't have people dedicated to managing skill-based matchmaking, you shouldn't be doing skill-based matchmaking because it's a lot of work. like managing skill-based matchmaking is way more challenging than like than I even understood when I first started looking into it. That's really my only kind of take from internally as a like working

on a game. I think externally it's just a like it's just a trap to talk about. Like I just don't think you even bother like don't understand why it is used. For years we've been discussing skill and it's and and no one has ever pointed to a game be like oh this skill bait matchmaking is perfectly like no one has done that. that has not existed in a gamer's voice ever. Uh if you die, it's bad skill best matchmaking. If you win, it's good. Like that's that's the end. And so I don't even understand why companies still talk about it. I do not get it.
I I agree with you that like publicly discussing it is is not really so much useful for the game or the state of it versus like solving it behind the scenes is more important. I have a I have a weird opinion on skill pace batchmaking. I think like from maybe it's more of a designer perspective. I think as a system skill-based matchmaking is not optimizing really for the fun of the player. We're just assuming that if you put players with a similar skill level together, they'll have fun. But like to

go like a little bit nerdy on this because I I also really enjoy uh chess. Basically, a lot of skill-based matchmaking systems were created based on the ELO system which was created for chess. But the whole goal of the ALO system was basically to just know the rating of a player and how good they are and he matched them in in tournaments to basically assure that the players aren't just getting totally stomped and they're climbing the ranks. But it was never for optimization of fun. I'm not sure even if the goal of chess is having fun. Like I really have fun in chess, but I'm not sure that's what the game's optimized for. And I think that concept we took to games because the majority of the times when you're playing with uh players that are on the same uh skill level, you win some, you lose some. It should be fun. But the real solution is you need to make sure that the players are winning way more often than they're losing to stick to the game. And this is why I think developers always get challenged with skill pass skill based matchmaking. It's it's so usually the solution for it like other games have done it in in the

backend systems. They sometimes let you matchmake with players that are much lower skilled than you. So you actually win a couple of rounds so you don't churn or they add bots to the match or that sort of things because as a system itself as as you said Chris you either need to have active management on it or you need to have something back in in the back end that also intervenes with skill-based matchmaking because if you have it all the time the players are going to lose around 50% of the time which is really not good for your retention.
But I mean it's a zero- sum game. This is this to me is what's been responsible for Clash Royale's huge resurgence. And we see this all the time in Marble Snap is that you can introduce bots which finally breaks that paradigm. It's not a zero- sum game. And Battlefield tried to make this move in 2042 because if you if you were to pull the kill inequality data, especially as the number of players in a given map increases, the amount of inequality between kills also increases. Because remember, you have to be less sensitive to skill as the number of players increases because you're just pulling from a wider pool to be able to

fill, let's say, 128 or 64 players in a server. I think we've just been at a crossroads on how to solve this because, you know, PC gamers aren't as accepting of bots, particularly in something like an 8v8 Call of Duty match where it's very obvious where there's low-level there's low-level players. I agree with you, Fros, that, you know, there [laughter] there's something to be said about chess's ELO just being a rating rather than a matchmaking system, but it's hard to imagine what the alternative is. Maybe we want a sigmoid, right? We want to have two S-curves that are having different amplitudes where some players are matched against someone who's a little bit better and some players who are match made against a little bit worse. I think system designers have really failed players in this regard. So to give you one example, you know, golf, golf always has players of different skill levels and we use handicaps and you can still play the same game. You just change the number of shots. And if you remember, Command and Conquer Mobile actually had this idea of challenge matches where you'd get double XP or you would get double ranked points if you

beat someone who was paired with you at a higher ELO. I'm just very surprised we haven't exposed systems like this to help mitigate this problem where winning becomes an underdog story uh and the stakes are higher. It feels like we've kind of failed gamers in solving this problem. I I don't think it's a a matchmaking problem. I think it's a system design economy problem if that's fair.
I agree. I think it's mostly a system design uh a problem. And I think the thing is that why didn't a lot of games bring those solutions. Matchmaking by itself has so many different factors that are involved in it. You need to optimize for countries, ping, how fast you matchmake because if matchmaking takes long, it's a lot of problems. You need to matchmake for based on skill. And then also another component that makes skill-based matchmaking tricky iso systems are based on one versus one. When you have team based games, it becomes even trickier. So if you have players that are highly skilled versus players lower skilled, they merge them together in a squad. They need to balance all of that. I'm sure there's a lot of system designers that designed very intricate systems, but then at the

same time when they try to apply them, they discover matchmaking these players using using this system will take a long time. So, it's much faster just to filter based on country, filter based on ping, apply just a couple of factors for skill and put the players in a server.
I'm with you on that. And the more playlists you have, the more subdivision you're doing. I don't I don't think people understand Call of Duty having these two playlists also in some sense hurts skill-based matchmaking because your pool has just shrunk significantly. And I wonder too if they're actual because whenever you whenever you build out like matchmaking pool segmentations, you have an assumption of how many players you have. You say like, "Okay, we have a million concurrent. we can break it down this way. And then like you get to the final section and you're like, "Okay, is 10,000 players enough to have a matchmaking queue time of less than a minute." And I wonder if a lower player count as well that they're having is impacting some of these decisions they made around the separating the pools. You know, they may have been assuming that they were going to hit last year's numbers. So separating the pools may have been an okay thing to do because you don't have players in each. But with, you know, lower sales and it appears, you know, much lower uh players, maybe this is now becoming an

issue that they weren't necessarily prepared for. If we were to think about where Call of Duty goes from here, at least for Black Ops 7, before we talk about the franchise, is there anything they can do to help salvage this situation? Because the numbers, as we were just seeing, aren't just bad. The numbers are some of the worst I've ever seen.
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If you compare even just looking at Call of Duty, so if you remember when you look at analytics for Call of Duty, you only are seeing the Call of Duty skew. You aren't seeing Black Ops 7 diced out because they unified it under a singular skew ID, but it looks like a content update. Like, I don't even think we've even think we've described just how bad this looks. But it's it's not even close to where Call of Duty was, let's say, at the beginning of October. And it feels like at least there's some relationship between Battlefield 6 launching and Arc Raiders launching which by the way Arc

Raiders on a DAU basis according to video game insights is neck andneck with Call of Duty for an unknown IP that's $40. Remember just just remember this Call of Duty skew that we're looking at includes War Zone which is free to play. This feels really really bad and I just don't know what you do if you're Activision or your product manager at Treyarch. Is there anything you can do here besides, you know, pulling out the whole 2xP weekend playbook? Is there any other tricks you got up your sleeve to to help mitigate this gaping hole of a problem? I think you have all the traditional free-to-play weekends and things like that to help. And I it's funny enough I do think like Steam DB is becoming a marketer's nightmare. And I don't know if marketers have yet determined how to handle that problem. But I wonder if they because it's it's a yearly product, you know, they can they can kind of I don't want to say scrap it, but they can move move stuff to somewhere else. You know, they can say like, "Look, we can't spending the effort to get x amount of like incremental installs is just not

worth it. Let's move, you know, all of our attention over." And I'm sure their dev I don't even know how their dev process works. It's probably extremely complicated. But that could be something they do. They may just pull the money away. Like let's get rid of all the marketing budget left and let's just push it towards whatever next is next year Infinity War. Is it a Modern Warfare title? I don't Is it? Okay. Like so maybe. Yeah, I think move it over to to Modern Warfare or whatever the I I think it's Modern Warfare. I'm not sure. And so whatever that becomes, just move it over there. This feels like a cutand run situation, but that may be too simple of an answer.
I I think I kind of agree with you, Chris. It's it's fine also for it to be cunn like I think what what I would do I would just set out this part of the year cuz I don't think like Christmas is going to bump up the sales so much and then focus on the long-term uh war zone comeback which will eventually feed really well into the the next title and I think like this game will sell okayish over time like it's still like Call of Duty has a lot of fans with sales etc the back catalog will will it will make some sales but I don't think you'll have the spike you wanted which is already

what they predict with the marketing spend. So, I don't think there's like one solution to fix uh this game. I think I would sit it out, focus on the long term for War Zone, and then as you said, Chris, like come back with a stronger maybe modern warfare or something that you know is going to sell stronger campaign, bring people back and have a more a more solid war zone next year would be the way to go. I think what I find a bit sad though is like this this game is really huge. Today I was talking to some friends about they have like within it a co-op full co-op experience. They have a campaign. They have all the Call of Duty stuff. It's it's it's becoming really huge. But then, I don't know if you guys read about that mode as well. After you unlock all or after you finish all the co-op experiences, you unlock this game mode called Endgame, which is like a full-on PVE extraction shooter on top of zombies as well. And I'm like, so there's so much investment and development work and effort that was put into this game. It it is really huge. I think it's like most probably the biggest shooter in the market. I don't

like it when a game like this this huge also doesn't have uh proper sales. It feels like a bit sad. Feels like a bit ominous sometimes for the market, but then again, as we said today, the other titles that were released around the same time did really well. So maybe it's not a bad sign for the shooter market overall. It just feels a little bit sad. You kind of wish that also Call of Duty did fine, too. So here's here's my soft transition question to Chris. Uh where is DMZ? Dondday, Donde Estas, DMZ.
That's kind of what I was going to jump on, you know, being the uh extract uh you know, extraction simp in the call. I would say like the DMZ launched with with Modern Warfare something. I forget like two or three years ago. And if if the next one is a Modern Warfare, then it fits right in. I have to imagine especially with Arc Raiders cuz like if you remember like 2020 is when Tarov popped off and so like 2021 you started to see companies being like we're working on an extraction shooter. We're working on an extraction shooter. Since then, it's been pretty quiet and now you have Arc Raiders up and so now Extractions in the in the news again. And so I have to imagine that DMZ is

heavily being discussed and how it's going to and how it's going to play a part in next year's Call of Duty. Does it become a standalone client like Warfare? Does it get expanded? Because DMZ like was a pretty weak extraction shooter. I played it a lot, but it has like no economy. It's risk versus reward doesn't really exist. like it's not like extraction. You extract from the game, but it doesn't really meet some of the standards that I would say need to be met. Um, and so if they make it more of a full-fledged game, um, make it like a war zone where it's a standalone free-to-play client or maybe a paid client, I think that's a strategy they can go down because our greater success, there's more data points that product managers at the company can point to of potential use cases for arguably, you know, save, you know, increasing revenue next year to save the revenue loss from this year by doing a DMZ motor. Speaking of meeting standards, War Zone was fun, but how about Reds? Am I right? This was the free-to-play battle royale mode from Battlefield 6. It has launched and it

has bombed. It has been it has been very bad. Reds has launched right the free-to-play mode from Battlefield and so far the numbers are not inspiring. We are looking at average daily concurrence on Steam 20 days after launch which is about when Red Sack launched. And for a free-to-play mode to not even reach close to the heights of where the launch product at $60 or $70 at this point, Battlefield was seems like we should be taking some learnings from this, especially when we compare it to War Zone, which radically shifted Activision's quarter. I mean, you can just see Activision who used to report daily active users across their portfolio. And of course, this was actually during Call of Duty Mobile. I think people forget that is they actually launched during the same quarter. But so far, this looks like a disaster of epic proportions. It is not bringing in the hundreds of uh millions of users that EA wanted it to. I don't know. Is this is this the end for Battle Royale? Is this was this a mistake to go free to play on this mode? It is a

separate skew on Steamish. I'm very confused in how they've set it up on Steam. It has a separate Steam store page listing, but it does not have its own Steam DB entry. It is counted as DLC but has a very unique Steam page that looks separate. I don't know what to make of Red Suck. Gentlemen, help me. Two perspectives and I'm really interested in Frost's thoughts here. Um, so I'll go quick. But the first is like, yeah, I mean, releasing a battle royale in 2025, it's just kind of it seems a little silly. Um, but that's like a kind of not a very interesting perspective. I I think the second one is when you look at if you think about war zone, if you think about the the big battle royale, like what are their differentiators? You know, you have you have heroes in Apex, you have building in Fortnite, and in my opinion, you have the Goolog in War Zone. I think those are key gameplay differentiators that each battle royale offers. I don't know what the gameplay differentiator of Red See is. It seems like you can respawn way more so games last way too long, and then you have the circle instantly kills you. Goolog and

and War Zone felt so good cuz it was so Call of Duty. like 1v one me bro is such a Call of Duty joke and they implemented it into with Goolog and I thought that was so strong. I don't feel like Reds had any gameplay differentiation when you compare it to other battle roy. That's the real like problem with it is like you play it and you're like, "Okay, it's another battle royale." You don't feel anything different.
I can see this the spike of uses not being as high as at launch that this is like definitely a challenge. On the other end, like as as we already said, Battlefield 6 has sold quite a bit this year. It's it's hard to measure obviously the impact. I don't think necessarily it's because of RedSick. the game sold as much being it's the free-to-play offering, but it actually reminds me a little bit when um Call of Duty first started doing its free free-to-play BRs when they released like Blackout and then on the success of Blackout, War Zone eventually came out. This is the first time that Battlefield does a free-to-play VR mode. So, there's still a lot of stuff to build on.

There's still a lot of stuff that could happen in live service that could turn it around. Uh, I can see what you said the Chris about maybe leaning more into the identity like it's already there's like vehicles you can get in the mode etc. But there's maybe more stuff that you can do around there. I was reading an interview I think was only IGN or PC gamers. They're discussing quite a bit the other mode which is Gauntlet. It's not only the BR but I don't feel like there's a lot of marketing material that covered Gauntlet as much as uh the battle royale mode. So maybe players aren't aware that there's this other game mode right now that is also free to play and then there's a lot of plans coming for it for the live service.
Could you explain gauntlet for us? What is gauntlet?
It's basically it it's not a BR mode. It's it's totally different and it's basically climbing up the ladder in a in a way, but there's so many things that you can play around with it and change it to to keep it fresh. So, I think maybe from what I also read online on um interviews, that seems like something they're leaning more towards to play on in the live service. That could be another thing that is is up their

sleeves there. I don't know if you're doing it justice. I I I think it is battle royale. The gauntlet mode in the sense that there squad-based survival based on rounds, I think, is consistent at least with some idea of battle royale. And I can't tell you how many design meetings I've been in where virtually everyone has had the idea that winning a battle royale match should get you some sort of ticket that gets you into a more exclusive battle royale match where other people have tickets. And no one has executed on that. And not only that, there's also been ideas from casual match if you know lava quest [laughter] from royal from royal match where you have this idea of a group of players going from lily pad to lily pad and if you survive eight rounds without losing and you get to the end, you split the jackpot with other players. I think Chris, you're right in the sense that there's been very little innovation in battle royale which I've been surprised by. It seems like everyone basically has given up on on what is one of the biggest genres ever and we haven't had

any innovation and this isn't it. And I think it's okay that this didn't have the innovation they expected. The win here is that it shipped. I just can't tell you what an achievement is that they shipped Battlefield 6 and then they executed against Reds a free-to-play battle royale mode. And if you just heard they're doing a free weekend in Battlefield very soon. So they are on the hardcore acquisition press and from a studio that I think has struggled mightily and I think part of that is EA execs who have apologized multiple times for the stress that was put on DICE. I just think people don't remember that over the course of a couple years DICE shipped Mirror's Edge Catalyst. They shipped Battlefront 1. They shipped Battlefield 5. They shipped Battlefront 2. And they shipped Battlefield 5. And there was a lot of tech debt that really harmed the studio and a lot of pressure was put on them. And certainly we had support studios, but this is one of the first times that they've had all the studios down to bear on this problem. And I think it's really shown in their ability to execute. Even if the innovation isn't there, I think the fact

that this came out is an amazing indication of where Vince is going to take the studio in the future. So I think this one's okay. And I think that the gauntlet mode to your point for us is at least some upside is there in the future. And it sounds like it's consistent with potentially what Chris I would agree with is the missing formula here, which is okay, you did the copy. I think you did a little bit of the improve, but you didn't do the innovate. If we go back to the SIDM rule of thirds, 1/3 copy, 1/3 uh improve, 1/3 innovate, and I agree they they missed that. I
think that like I mean I don't think that like Battlefield is over, right? I don't think we're I think we'll be talking about Battlefield still for the next 10 years. Um, and so I think that maybe there I don't know what the internal discussion was, but maybe there was like, hey, we just got to get back to a base and then let us build. I could feel that being a totally justifiable argument based on 20442's um, you know, launch. Um, and so I can see them saying like, let's just get this out. Let's copy uh, let's make sure it works. Let's build, you know, fix our tech or whatever. Although, like to be fair, tech is just every company that's

not unique to DICE. No matter no matter what, they got to a base and now they have time to build. They're trying to make it a live service. I would argue their first, you know, the season one update is not really surprised like impressed me from a live per service perspective. It's more maps, more weapons. It's like, okay, it's just the same stuff. While Arc Raiders in like the first week launches like a community event where players have to gather stuff like in my opinion, like that is what makes live services better compared to just releasing, you know, a new map. But they have a base. They have a strong base and so it could be really good for the for the future. Absolutely.
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top grossing games already have a web store, but the one scaling fastest, they're doing it with app charge. Learn more at appcharge.com. Speaking of strong bases, we are about to explore Arc Raiders, which seems like the biggest IP in the world right now. We're looking at Video Game Insights, which is estimating that of November 24th. Arc Raiders has sold 7.7 million units. Now, if you do the math on that, let's say $45 ASP, you're looking at north of $300 million in gross revenue. And ladies and gentlemen, we're not even in December yet. And that does not include MTX, which I think has been under discussed in this product. I took the W for Battlefield, but am I about to eat some crow on this one, Chris? Is this it? Is this the extraction moment for Arc Raiders? I mean, it's a moment in the genre. So, let me tell you the spiel that I used to talk about, the the evolution of the

extraction genre. Uh, this is a little bit simplified, but I've always used it because it helps my arguments. Um, first in MMOs, right, you had Ultima, Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft. In Battle Royale, you had H1Z, PUBG, Fortnite, and I feel like Arc Raiders is in that PUBG area. So, you had Tarov, you have Arc Raiders. There's going to be a third that brings it to the mass mainstream like Fortnite did for Battle Royale, like World Warcraft did for MMOs. I still believe that to be true. So, we're still on the journey of what this genre looks like. I'm I'm I am incredibly impressed with Arc Raiders. Am surprised from when there's been like tech tests for years and I remember playing early builds and and kind of being a little bit confused about what's going on, but they have really rounded it out. They've actually we talk about like it casualizing the genre a bit. I actually don't think the game casualizes much. I think we're actually I mean it does casualize quite a bit but not like casualizing it for the casual audience. And I think that we

are in the early wipe phase that we always talk about in Tarovs. The early wipes of Tarovs are the best. That's the most fun time to play. That's where we are in Arc Raiders. And everybody's talking to each other on solos. Everybody's trying to get loot. But there's going to be a point where you no longer need the loot, especially with no mandatory wipes. And what does that change about the community player base? And how much right now is the game success tied to that community? Because as the game gets older, as players get to level 75, as players no longer care about losing their gear, they're going to be it's going to become more and more focused down to a PvP more I would say more core audience. Um, and once that exists, I don't know what that curve looks like and I don't know how long that exists, but we're in this like honeymoon phase right now, which is awesome. But yeah, this is like early wipe Tarov stuff and if we look at early wipe Tarov, it always, you know, it's great. Everybody's talking, everybody's having a great time, no one has good anything. Um, battles are really fun and then as the wipe continues, everybody gets their gear and no people no longer

care. You see massive drops in players. The games become super super sweaty all the time. So, I just don't know what that looks like for Ark and how they handle it. I know they have expeditions, which is optional. I just don't know what it actually is going to look like in the long term. I I actually have a lot of confidence that they'll they'll figure this out and and they're absolutely thinking about it. Like, this is not a unique perspective that I have. They're absolutely thinking about this as well. And so I'm actually just really excited to see what it looks like, you know, even in three months, what this game is doing.
I I say what you're saying quite a bit, Chris, is one thing that I was thinking about the other day as in like this is obviously such an amazing start for this game again, uh, it being released between the two big giants, selling as much, totally new IP, all of these numbers, like they're through the roof. So it's it's really amazing. I'm very happy to again seeing another great shooter from Sweden always makes me happy. Uh but then I was thinking about the long term because again this uh you start the game honey the the honeymoon phase etc. And then I think the key

difference here that is currently also helping in the game is the PVE elements of arc raiders being a bit different than other extraction shooters. The concept here that you and other players could work together in the PvE element is such a strong part of our raiders that I think is changing the game quite a bit. So later on, as you're saying, maybe you don't need the loot anymore. You have everything you need, and then the game becomes naturally PvP focused and extraction shooters. This time around, if they keep introducing more and more PVE elements that the raiders need to work together towards and keeping that part fresh, combined with the different community events and the social emergent play that's coming in the game, I think that might be the long-term play in uh in this game. It's it's something that, you know, I've been discussing as well with with my friends quite a bit. Like I'm seeing extraction shooters overall, I find always the PVE element of it more interesting than the PV V P V P V P V P V P V P V P V P V P V P VP element in a way. So games that invest in that quite a bit like are

great is going is doing quite well. I'm sure you guys heard about like Escape from Dov, which is a purely PvE extraction, I know, but it's sold quite a bit actually and I think I think there's even a market for just pure PvE extraction shooters. Um, we're not going to cover the name of the genre again, but if [laughter] we consider Hell Divers 2 being PvE, the PVE elements in our creators being really strong at selling a lot, maybe a small indicator from escape from DO, but I think there's that space that extraction shooters for the longest time been have been appealing to hardcore players that are really really good at PvP and the and the E part was on the side. Maybe the E element being in the forefront and the social element being in the forefront and the PVP taking a back seat is the way for this genre to reach mass appeal a bit more than before. I asked our last episode what made Arc Raiders different than all the other extraction shooters before it. And now that I've had a chance to play it, it's much more obvious to me. And one of the things we talked about was this idea of it not being an extraction shooter, but more of

an extraction adventure. And I think that's something that really struck home with me. And I I really agree with you, Chris, that this is not a huge leap in the extraction genre. It feels a little bit more incremental than I expected. I think people are just underestimating how much the immersion and the storytelling aspects of the game really were nailed by Embark, which is a bunch of DICE people, right? And DICE has always been good at immersion. I mean, by and large, these are the people who brought you Battlefield 1, and I think they really got that level of immersion down here, which is part of the reason it sold so many box units. On the gameplay side, people forget, you compare it to Escape from Tarov, you're going from a genre where you were like healing your fibula, [laughter] you know, you were loading bullets into individual guns. And so, the bar for accessibility was so low. And we have seen other games somewhat come close to this. There was this game called Hawked. I don't know if any of you guys had a chance to play it, which I loved. But the IP was awful. It it looked like the worst version of Fortnite. But what it did have is simplified objectives. And I

think that's the other thing that really came across here is that I have so much more purpose when I enter a game when I play Arc Raiders. And that feels very simple for the player having goals. But that's one of the big things you learn in systems and economy design is that what these missions do for players, these daily quests, all of these things is they help guide player action because a lot of people are just aimless in games. And so just giving them an arbitrary objective really has a huge influence on directing player action. And not only do they give players objectives here, they're significant. Blueprints in Arc Raiders did a lot for me, right? Because they give you a chance to have permanent progression. Again, they're softening a lot of the permal that you see, and they're adding a lot more of what you might consider accessible mechanics. Wipes are too brutal or too brutal for a genre like this. It is not a mainstream feature, and again, I don't think we've seen the last of extraction shooters. I think there's a lot to go. So, I think right now we're on the screen, we're seeing all this loot being captured. I don't think that's something that's going to survive in its current state. I can tell you that I have a really hard time imagining this vendor model, which all

the extraction shooters have where you have specific vendors you go to for specific types of loot. I have a hard time imagining that survives more accessibility. So, I think there's a ton more optimization to have in extraction shooters. This is an incremental step forward and I think people are underestimating the immersion and storytelling that Embark is really good at. The key will be how do how do they do their live service, right? How do they take their live service from where it is today? I thought one of the really interesting comparisons I pulled up was looking at Arc Raiders in relation to Hell Divers 2. Cuz if you look at the two games, they're tracking almost identically when it comes to PSU on a day since release basis. And so when I think about what Hell Divers has achieved, if we were to extend out this PSU curve, what you would see is that Hell Divers has actually hit a really stable base with increases during their seasonal launches. And I think that could be something that our graders can mirror. And normally I'd be skeptical of any DICE people running a live service just based on the struggles we've had. But the ultimate reality is is that The Finals has been an amazing series of

training wheels for embark. And to me has proven that they can develop content pipelines that sustain. I think Arc Raiders is a game that can benefit from that and will benefit from that. And if you're Embark, if you're Patrick Soderland, the thing I would take away from this is is to stop the finals. I think you have to stop that game immediately and you need to move all your resources to Arc Raiders. You need to hold on real tight because right now there isn't a huge monetization vector in Arc Raiders, which is fine. They can move box copies for a really long period of time. People forget that is the oldest form of monetization is just selling box copies. But they do have to start to think about how monetization is going to work in this game. And I think they're gonna face some real struggles in figuring that out. And I think that remains to be seen. Right? If you remember, Call of Duty DMZ was playing with this idea of selling insurance slots that were tied to characters. So monetization norms haven't been developed yet for extraction shooters, and I don't think it's going to be cosmetic only. This has been a problem in the West. And so I'm also curious to see if our creators will have any answers here beyond the usual to be able to sustain development. It's it's

interesting you're comparing in this graph uh Hell Divers too because I think what I saw in the game there's early exploration of monetization that's a bit similar to Hell Divers with the deck system.
I think the Arc Raiders decks are mostly cosmetics but with every page there's a pack that contains some um gameplay items. So I think they're already experimenting with the War Bonds uh monetization. I don't think they can go as aggressive uh with gameplay again because it's a PvE VP game, not just PvE like Hill Divers. And I agree with you when it comes to the store. I don't think the monetization is is there yet. So So the long term, it seems right now this is more on focusing on uh boxes. I think they did a cool thing with uh they've they've reduced the prices of cosmetics and then refunded uh the hard currency to the players that have already purchased some of the cosmetics. I think it's such a smart move if you maybe I am only speculating maybe the store wasn't performing as much but at the same time the players are reacting to the prices so you're focusing on when this is the right way to move more boxes

right now we get better
come come on man you really think the price elasticity of cosmetics is such that the drop in price they saw resulted in more than an increase in demand for the cosmetic themselves or you think they made it up in box units
I wasn't saying that because they reduced the prices in cosmetics people bought the game more. I'm just saying from a public perspective, uh there was some players complaining about the prices and now you've taken care of that. You've reduced the prices.
When are they not comparing when are they not complaining about the prices?
I think you have a point that a lot of times the players do complain, but at the same time, why not have like all your messaging be positive about the game? If you have like a key negative area right now
because you because you sync your norms, you sync your ability to set prices at the you're losing a whole stream of LTV. So 20% now is 20% you're not going to have for the rest of the game's life cycle. That to me is a huge multi-million dollar decision.
It is. I would I'm I'm kind of on for I'm with For us here. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you actually why here. I'll talk about cosmetic creep here in a

second. And so I I I do think that their sales were like way higher than they were. They're like, "Hey, let's just take this positive sentiment, take a maybe some hit in revenue, and then what they'll do is they'll just release epic cosmetics that actually look good and cost more money." What I always called it was cosmetic creep. What do you launch with and what do cosmetics look like in one year from today? What you like the goal in my opinion if you're like optimizing revenue is to launch with the least complicated cosmetic that can get the most sales to leave room V effects on it. Give some animations, give some sparks, make it like big ass shoulders, like do cool [ __ ] Like cosmetics are pretty weak. Uh I will say they plan on increasing uh the complexity of these cosmetics over time and then they'll just raise the prices and they'll call it like an epic skin instead of you know something else and then you can get the revenue from there. You had the positive sentiment today and it's a win-win. That's kind of my perspective on what they'll do. I agree with you guys. I agree with you that the quality was not there. They did not nail the cure system common,

uncommon, rare, epic. They did not have sufficient differentiation. What is the ultimate test of any cosmetic system? If I were to give you the cosmetics unlabeled, no rarity labels, could a player arrange them from least rare to most rare without those labels? And I think this game fails that test in spades. The problem is that you paint yourself into a corner cuz now what you do is you you show weakness in front of Reddit. I think I think that is a mistake from a community management perspective because now the norms for what monization are have been reduced significantly in my view and moving them up again is going to ignite a [ __ ] storm. and now that you've shown weakness, they will they smell blood. If they smell blood, they'll go after you. They're looking for an effigy. And so, I think it's going to be very challenging to work your way back up. You know, obviously the the right answer is that you shouldn't have set them at this price point uh in the first place. But I do feel like you're in a you're in a place where I think you should have swapped out the cosmetics when you had the new cosmetics ready to go. I would have done a you know, reduced the old ones, introduced the new one. I I

wouldn't have reduced them at this time. Um, I I think that might have been a community management mistake.
I think there's a totally fair argument that they reacted way too quickly to this. I was kind of surprised by it. And to be fair, I tend to also not like to give in that early, but given the circumstances and the fact that they're called Embark and not EA or Microsoft or Activision or Bungie helps a lot. They don't have the brand fatigue that other games do where you if you give in in a like if you give in on a COD, the community will kill you forever because it's Activision. like it's brand equity is not nearly what what Embark is. I think Embark is able to get away with some of these things because they are you know I think inside the industry we know Pat we know who Patrick Soderland is right but an average player doesn't know what Embark Studio is I mean I would assume compared to something like Activision and so they're getting like a fresh perspective on this company compared to seeing oh this company caves in they see this company is trying to like listen to its players but if you look at Call of Duty it would look like caving in. There's a branding thing here

that I'm I'm not a branding person. Maybe Jen or Jyn's a marketer. I always get marketing and brand mixed up sometimes, but I think that there is there's something there that I cannot really quantify. And so from the perspective of if I was working at DICE and did this, yes, that would be caving in. But with the a new studio name, a new IP, I don't think it has the long-lasting impact that it would have on a more established uh brand. Speaking of collapse of brand equity, let's cover our last topic here, which is the fabled most hyped launch of I would say what has been five, six, seven years in the making. Escape from Tarov came out on Steam. And the headline from one of the news outlets, I think it was EU Gamer was, "It is not a game. It is a cosmic punishment. You do not play Escape from Tarov. You endure it. You endure until madness becomes your only friend." To say it was a technical cluster [ __ ] would be an understatement and I would say that has only been the case if you initially got the game from digital

distribution, direct distribution from Battlestate, the developer, the Russian developer. It has been a test uh you know testicle. It has been a technical mess since the beginning and it looks like this was not any better. The Steam numbers which we were looking at earlier here you can see this blue sad sad line is Escape from Torov and to be fair player base is split now between Steam direct distribution you remember Epic Game Store actually had a release here but is it over from Escape from Torov is there is there is this the ceiling for the game in the west? Is it a ceiling? Yeah, that's a I I don't know if I have any argument to say that it's not. Um I I think it it definitely could be. I although their Steam numbers aren't great. I mean, not great from like our perspective, but they still probably made about 20 million from releasing on Steam. So, there's some success for a small develop well small a double A developer making 20 million. But yeah, I mean outside of the sales and everything, I was really disappointed because personally a lot of internal arguments that occur are what

is the definition of beta? What is the definition of alpha? What is the definition of a server slam? and you get caught up in these terms and what release means and you just spiral out of control. Now we have just fuel completely lost what any of these terms mean anymore. What does it mean when Tarov releases its 1.0? You have different expectations and it was they they're treating it like an alpha. They're making like random updates 2 days into launch without any communication. They're just like treating it as nothing different. And so I I find these terms release and 1.0 just to be so meaningless nowadays. They're more marketing terms than product terms. Um, which I find very frustrating. I I don't see how they grow from this point on. I don't know what the avenue is unless they get a console version, which I do not even understand how that would be possible given the complexity of it. I do not see where they go up from here compared to just kind of holding on to what they have, which is really what they've been doing for the last 3 years anyways. And it's it's really sad because like again, I'm a diehard Darkov fan. I really wanted people to appreciate why I love this

game and they showed terribly. Um, as we were kind of talking about earlier with the emerging gameplay that exists within Arc Raiders, that is something that I find is what makes the extraction genre so compelling. The stories I have from Tarov are better stories than I have from nearly any other game I've ever played and it was all just emerging gameplay from being just from the sandbox that they provided us. Arc Raiders is showing this to a broader audience that like this that's what this genre does. It's not necessarily about the progression is definitely a key part to the design of the game, but the emerging gameplay is what makes these games so entertaining, much like survivor games or survival games. And I was hoping that Arc Raiders, you know, Rising Tide raises all boats. Uh, and I'm hoping that Arc Raiders will lift up the genre, but it doesn't appear like it had much impact, at least no positive impact on Tarov. Um, and I'm kind of speaking just from emotion here because it's just really sad. I I love this game so much. I just really wanted it to come out come out of the gate strong and they just [ __ ] failed like again like every release they do sucks and it's so

frustrating. Every wipe has these problems at the start. The 1.0 one is one of the worst and on like the big stage arguably um which makes it worse but it is incredibly frustrating and it's like god damn. I think I loved hearing Chris being so emotional about the game. He loves it way more than me. So I'm happy with what he shared. I don't know why they've done it like that. you've been like, it's not like they need to rush to release it now on Steam. They could have waited a bit more when things are more stable. Arcus just came out. Everyone's playing that one. Why jump head on with this one and compare? Just wait a little bit cuz you're right, like the the next big thing they can do is a console release, which I think it's impossible with this game. I don't think they can do that. They already tried to have a mix of I think they already tried to have a mix of two games with connected progression. That didn't do so well either.
Yeah. Like arena shooter. Yeah. So, I think this is it. Your same release is the next big be for you and uh you really don't want to mess that one up. So, I I'm just I guess sad as not as

much as you, Chris, but but I but I but I hear you. Like I think this just could have waited a couple of months and things could have been much better. I think
we're looking right now at the Video Game Insights estimates of players by country for Escape from Torov. And I actually think this illustrates the main problem, which is that they failed to broaden the audience on the Steam release. So the top three countries from Escape from Tarov are Russia, China, and Turkey. The United States is fourth and Japan is in a distant fifth. That is usually not the distribution you see. That's exactly what I would expect from Escape from TOC. It probably mirrors what the direct distribution numbers look like. And the whole point of being on Steam was to reach a broader audience. I would argue Western Europe and North America because that is a far more important discovery platform for those audiences. The fact they were not able to achieve that to me says there's been huge marketing problems in being able to reach this audience. I think they got publishing problems uh in addition to their technical problems and the fact that these numbers I would argue again probably look closer to the

direct distribution is the symptom of broader problems that Battle State is having as a Russian studio too. They've gotten some flak for that as well and they probably should have. Okay. Shoot a monthly uh episode two in the canned.