Shooter Monthly #3 Marathon vs the Market, Valorant Goes Massive, Marvel Rivals Misreads Progression

Hey, it's Phil here from Shooter Monthly. We recorded this episode for the passing of Vince Zampella. We will be covering his legacy and how much he achieved in the next shooter monthly as well as his everlasting legacy. But until then, we send our best to the Zenala family and to our friends and colleagues at Respawn.
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 when they debut.
The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for the time.
There's one more thing Battlefield.
I've got a chainsaw. [music] I had to fight for that.
Programming mods are building, you know, 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 [music] to your squad is a dog.

Hey, is that about ready? These they take time. [music] Shooter monthly episode three. They have not been able to double tap us yet. Is the podcast that's never out of bullets. I am Philip Black, your host. former DICE, former Amazon Game Studios, former Scopely, a lot of ex-girlfriends. And today I'm joined by two other wonderful co-hosts. Unfortunately, Mr. Chris Anos could not make it for this cast. We will have him back in January. Man, he's got some takes, let me tell you, if I'm looking at these email threads the same way you guys are. But in his place or adjacent to him, I have from Seaside Consulting.
Hello, I'm Chris Sides, former Bungie, former EA. I think we're all probably former I think like half the industry is former EA at this point. Uh but I've als I also announced yesterday that uh we started up my own gaming company called Grey Goat Gaming. Me and my buddy Saba Monte. Thank you so much. He's a former

Bethesda and former EA and yeah, we started working on some projects. Yeah, I'm h I'm excited to be here. I do miss Anos as well though.
And hailing I think it's from Michael Jordan. What was that again for us?
It's the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Mr. Philip Black, I'm enjoying the sun. It's really good. So yeah, gonna say hi everyone. I'm Fras Musmar XAX Dice Game Loft and currently product director at TTK and I am in sunny Jordan right now when it's not really sunny in the rest of the world. So I'm kind of showing off but it's a bit cold too. Full full clip of topics today if I can fit in any more shooter puns. We're going to be talking about Call of Duty's fail press release. We've got Marathon's delay and what it means. More broadly talking about delay. And that's right, ladies and gentlemen, mobile is a part of shooters and Valerant Mobile is apparently China's biggest success according to a 10-centent quarterly earnings report. And neatly paired with that, EA is hiring a VP of shooter. What the hell does that mean? I have seen Battlefield

Mobile back in the day, so it' be interesting to talk about that again. We'll also be touching on one of the strangest reveals for shooter and perhaps one of the most strange shooters in the last couple years, which is Highguard. What is Highguard? What is it trying to do? And time permitting, Marvel Rivals. I mean, we're talking about the biggest games. Marvel Rivals year in review 2025, what happened? I think it's been meh. And I think that says a lot about game development. I think Chris might have some opposing opinions on this one. Uh, on the supply side, arms race between the East and the West. Let's go. Attention app and game developers. Are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games? With Sensor Tower, you get the ultimate competitive edge. Whether it's breaking into new markets, fine-tuning your UA strategies, or boosting monetization, dive into data like never before, track global trends across app stores, analyze market leading inapp

purchase and inapp ad strategies, and benchmark your performance with realtime insight. The best part, Sensor Tower doesn't just deliver data. It helps you turn it into action with intuitive tools and expert analysis. It's everything you need to make smarter, faster decisions. Thousands of app and game studios, from indie creators to global giants, trust Sensor Tower to help them win. So why not you? Start your free trial today at sensortowwer.com. That is sensor.com. Call of Duty press release from the team. This was pretty shocking. There was a recent blog post that the team published talking about the fact that this release for Black Ops 7 did not land. Claim [clears throat] is that they're going to do more listening, faster duration, clearer accountability.

They're going to do some short-term trust stuff like free access trials and double XP. They talk about season 1 as trying to bring the game back into where they think it should be. But here is the key piece of information. No more backtoback releases within the same sub franchises. So no more Black Ops 6, Black Ops 7, Black Ops 8, or Modern Warfare 1, Modern Warfare 2. That apparently is going away. I thought this was a dramatic admission of failure, gentlemen, and is everything we've been talking about. Yeah, I was pretty surprised to hear him say it, but um I think something that I would I would point out is uh when we talk about like live service games, we always talk like the levers that you have. I think Call of Duty has built a lot built a lot of really good levers. And so whenever they do run into something like this, they have these levers they can pull here's a free thing, we'll give you these cosmetic, we'll unlock this stuff for you. Um which I think is just like a overall a good takeaway from like managing a life service is every life service is going to go through this problem. Maybe not as, you know, intense as something as big as Call of Duty, but

every live service will have a downtime where players are upset. You know, the design didn't hit, you know, you did something wrong. But having those levers there, I think is really important.
Yeah, I don't think this is the first time Call of Duty found itself in such a spot. Like they were they had something similar with Infinite Warfare. I'm not sure I don't remember if they had a press release like that. I actually think that the decision not to make backto back uh releases in the same sub franchise. I think it's a bit of a no-brainer. not because of what just happened. Like um for me when you do that it does feel like a direct sequel and then you have a direct sequel problem. I was even reading the other day the um I think was the creative director of Rainbow Six Siege. He was being interviewed and he was being asked about like what's what about the sequel for this game and they were saying there they don't believe in releasing a sequel because the players will feel like the rug will get pulled under them. They lose a lot of investments etc. And I feel it's kind of maybe the same when you have the same sub franchise gets released two years in a row. Like when you switch it around, even though it's all in the Call of Duty, it doesn't feel

like a direct sequel. And I think I think it's a good choice actually not to have backtoback releases and sub franchises for that reason. Especially if you want players don't feel like they lost their investment in the game. I
mean, doesn't the fact that FIFA and Madden come out with the new yearly editions every single year? Isn't that the like a counter thesis to this? I think when you look at sports and the type of players that engage with it, it's such a different different different market. Uh the way that FIFA has managed to do it is quite unique I would say. But then the type of players they have are uh some of them that's the only uh game they play. They they are not even usually video gamers. They just love to play football. So I think that plays quite a bit. And then it's kind of like saying why would you watch the World Cup every four years or why would you watch the Champions League? It's I think it's kind of similar when it comes to football. I'm not sure if the same logic would apply to shooters.
So I I want to agree with you and I think that's fair because sports have a lot of season seasonality that's already built into them. But if we just think

back to Bobby Codex's main innovation and it was like the key innovation which was having these three dev studios each working on threeyear cycles making sure that there was a yearly cascading release of Call of Duty. When that was announced, I was immediately skeptical. Like, isn't there going to be Call of Duty fatigue? Aren't people going to be done with Call of Duty? And instead, it enhanced the franchise. Like, it it grew it. Like, it didn't take anything away. It's not like there's a fixed amount of Call of Duty appetite in the world, and when you release a game, you satiate some of that, and every time you release a new game, you're kind of pulling from that same pool. Like, that was my mental model. And the success of the yearly releases of Call of Duty made me completely like reorient my point of view. Like when we think about power, you know, sometimes in corporations, people always say, "Oh my god, I don't want to spend my political capital on that." But I've kind of become like this this fultian belief that like the more you exercise power, the more you have of it, [laughter] right? And I think when I think about Call of Duty, it's completely reoriented my expectations

around this. I get not releasing the same sub franchise every single year, but I I think it's hard to position that as fatigue when the franchise is still able to have yearly releases. I think people just want good experiences. Doesn't doesn't matter if it's the same subranchise or not.
I I would agree with that, but I'm also like there's a big part of what what's happening this time is related to the Call of Duty fatigue. It's hard to argue against that, but I think it's also the games that came out this year combined with releasing two games in the same sub franchise at the same time. So, let's say let's look at next year. Uh, usually Battlefield doesn't release back to back. So, there's a good chance Battlefield 7 or whatever version of that won't be out next year. And so, if Call of Duty manages to just release another Call of Duty that is in a different subranchise, it will already most probably just sell higher than uh Black Ops 7. Like I I see already just the situation that this game got released in is you know obviously there is Battlefield 6 followed with Arc

Raiders which I was looking at the numbers today still sustaining huge amount of the player base. So I think COD this time just had a huge amount of competition combined with the challenges that they had around CO fatigue and maybe it forced the players to rest for a while but I think most likely they're going to have a solid comeback uh next year. I don't think they should skip a year to reduce that fatigue is my view right now. No, I agree with you on that.
Well, I agree. I think too saying that like the sub franchise is like coming from Call of Duty, they're not going to say like, "Hey, the market was really tough and we couldn't compete." You know, that that's not what they're going to say. So, they rely on like, "Oh, it's this sub franchise thing." And players like, "Oh, yeah. I think that makes sense. I think it's a really good narrative um to give to the audience, but I think deep down there's some other stuff around like I'm sure there's discussions happening there about like the actual competition that exists within the FPS space or the shooter space as a whole. Like not even FPS at this point. I think Arc Raiders is probably going to have some impact as well. It's third person. So just like shooters in general. Um but it's a

really good narrative to give out to players. I think speaking of narrative, Marathon has been delayed. Bungie announced it from its original September 20th, 2025 release. It has now moved to March 2026. We have a price, ladies and gentlemen. We have a business model. It is going to be priced at $40. And of course, 35 sterling, so screw you, UK. I don't think that exchange rate works out. And there were some other announcement details on free updates. They're also going to be have nonexpiring reward passes. Ladies and gentlemen, war bombs have won which I'd love to cover at some other point. If you remember, Halo Infinite also had a version of this, too. FOMO is going to bring that up.
FOMO is dead. And there's also going to be some new gameplay features after player feedback, which is exactly what we expected. They talked about corpses. They talked about loadouts. They talked about some things that I don't know. It seems like they haven't taken anything from the Arc Raiders success yet, gentlemen. What What does this mean? What does this

mean? Is this how you should do in delays? I mean, I would first say that like I think the Vidok they released was awesome. I mean, Marathon's a gorgeous game. Bungie's known for gameplay. Art and gameplay are not a problem Bungie has to worry about. I feel when releasing a game into the market. But concerning the delay, the kind of like broader topic I would talk about is whenever I I feel like whenever delays are discussed at any company that you're working at, it's often comes down to a budgetary question. Can we afford this? And if we can't, how do we? So, if you look back when a game is delayed, there's often like some sort of layoffs that could be tied to it because they have to pay for the the delay in some fashion. But the question that I feel doesn't really get discussed is does the mark does this game still fit the market based on the new launch date? And I think whenever we look at if it launched in September, this is before Arc Raiders. And I would say like Arc Raiders has really kind of I won't say blown up, but brought extraction to a more like mainstream audience or maybe a more casual shooter audience. But before then, everybody's kind of mindset was Tarov or like Delta Force or Arena

Breakout, these kind of more milsim focused titles. And so launching into that market and players expectations is different than launching now post Arc Raiders. And I don't know what that means for Marathon. Like as I talked about last time, I think there's this progression where you have, you know, a genre is niche. You have some game that makes it mainstream and then you have a game that blows it up. You know, talking about kind of the pub the King of the Kill, PUBG, Fortnite um direction. And so there is a world where this actually Arc Raiders is coming out which actually heavily benefits Marathon. It made you know other players who never knew about this genre exist and maybe they will now try Marathon and maybe Marathon is that third game. But there's also the downside where like now players have a $40 price point in their head of what an extraction shooter is like and the content it provides and you have to hit those bars. You have to meet that because you're just going to be compared to Arc Raiders constantly. So it again is a pro and a con. And I I was I mean obviously I wasn't there for those conversations but I do wonder if they thought about like okay Arc Raiders is going to come out here like do we need to alter any of our strategy pushing the game out till March. Um but yeah again I

mean I think it looks I mean the Vaid do was great and it was great to see old co-workers still there like I thought it was a an awesome one. I mean and also the marketing department of Bungie is very solid and so they're they're able to make really compelling videos. Once once the game launches and the details come out, that's where will really determine how marathon success will look.
Yeah, I kind of agree with you, Chris. Like they've done a really really good job with uh with the announcement and the dock. I think like it got me excited about the game. Seems like the delaying of it did a really really good thing for it. I I feel even the vibes on the internet have shifted. Maybe it's even as you said because Arcade is so well received now they're even in a better spot. I'm actually can't wait to see how much they got inspired by art creators. Which change they made and either they moved more in the direction of art creators or more away from it. I don't know. But it's I'm sure it had an impact. I think of course like delays are impacted by budget meeting fiscal etc. There's a lot of reasons why you would pick a date. But I think if I had

like let's say all the options in the world, I would have waited three more months. Maybe I would have released a little bit later. I think upgrade is still too much on fire maybe for players to spend in another 40 but uh maybe by March uh the players will be excited about something new. I think if if I was releasing marathon right now I'd be slightly worried about the window but you know 3 months in a game development time is like what 5 years so maybe things will change by then. And I I wanted to talk about the well I'll get to the passes I I'll let you finish first. Sorry.
No, I was going to say Frost I completely agree with you. I don't understand why they didn't move this to May. So, if you remember, GTA was originally scheduled for May and so everyone kind of built this blast radius around GTA releasing and then GTA has moved to November. And so, that whole window has kind of been suspiciously empty. And so, putting it in March just feels unnecessary to me where you could have filled in where that GTA hole would have been and I think really sucked up again some of the air here. To me that

the very simple calculation is how much additional revenue can you make for each month of delay relative to the cost of paying developers without a revenue stream. Like I think we can model this out. I mean say that's definitely part of it but you know Sony's a publicly traded company and so there are fiscal years um that they have to be abided by or not abided by but they want revenue in certain fiscal years. the end of Sony's fiscal year is March. And so that's why that's why I would assume that they have to launch in this fiscal year in order to get some sort of revenue from that game for this fiscal year. Um cuz I'm sure they've told they've told the street that you know there's revenue coming from this game in this in this fiscal year. That is super moronic. Uh and I think is not is not in the best interest of shareholders. I I hate this philosophy. It's not in the interest of shareholders. Maximizing net present value is in the interest of shareholders, not Q1 or Q3. Yes, you have to reduce guidance, but I actually think these are clear situations in which there's this prisonable agent problem that executives and sometimes employees are misincentivized and not aligned with shareholders. So, I

actually don't think it's about the street. I actually think this is sometimes management gone arry. Um, not actually an interest of Wall Street.
It might be a combination of of both to be honest because like you've seen when they just delayed uh just delayed GTA and the stock price reacted to that. you have to change the guidance and the shareholders do respond to that. So I think if you're if you're running a publicly traded company, I I don't envy anyone's job for doing that. Maybe the pay is great, but the stress that comes with it and like managing all of these things like um I don't think it's just management thinking like this is the best thing for the game, the best thing for the shareholders, the best thing for the employees. I think they're managing all of these three things. So like I'm sure what Chris said is correct. This is a a fiscal play. They had to release it now in March. If they delayed it, the stock price would drop and then maybe the shareholders will be upset. Maybe their own investments will get impacted. So I I don't think it's just the management going array. I think shareholders will get pissed too sometimes if you do that. I think it's just very tricky to manage this. I don't

love it, but I think it's just part of being [laughter] publicly traded company.
I think that's fair. I would say GTA is the Take 2 P&L. Like the impact of GTA to Take 2 is so enormous relative to the impact of Marathon to Sony which has so many other divisions, you know, not not just entertainment, but remember they have the television division. They have K-pop demon hunters which was made by them. They've got devices. So like that should be insurance to be able to absorb impacts like this. And the other thing I would point out is GTA shifted significantly. Like this is the second delay they've had. And not only that, it's a multi-month delay and that is an extremely development expensive development. So, like adding six more months of GTA, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of additional additional dev fees. And look at I from what I understand, Bunny is pretty expensive. But I think GTA is on a whole another level. But point hurt point. It did move share prices.
Yeah. And to be clear, like I don't know if that is the motivation behind launching in March. It's just kind of as an outsider looking in like why would

they pick March instead of like why specifically March compared to May like GTA? My kind of basic assumption is that it's tied to the Sony fiscal year, but I don't know anything.
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million MAU they reporting for Valerant Mobile, which is something that's been in development for a really long time. And this is a good excuse for us to just revisit where the mobile shooter market is because it's something that's not well understood. And the reason it's not well understood is because it doesn't exist outside of China. There's basically Call of Duty Mobile in the West. And so right now we're looking at the top 10 games reported by Sensor Tower for iOS in the shooter category. The reason we're not looking at Android is because it is does not have a unified app store and so is iOS reporting is a lot more consistent. And if we look at the last 30 days in terms of MAU, one of the under reportported successes has actually been Delta Force. I don't know if you've been following this gentleman, but like Delta Force is absolutely [ __ ] slaying on mobile. And it looks like Valerant has just slipped in underneath there 10. Uh Sensor Tower is only reporting around 3 million MAU, not 50 million. And I think that's completely feasible given the strength

of Android in China. But it's remarkable to look at this Chinese shooter chart which includes games like Lost Light from NEI Crossfire which as we know was an enormous success in China and ripped off CSGO. Arena Breakout remember that was actually an extraction shooter that's done really well. Even when you look at top 10 Knives Out, boy, we haven't talked about that that game in a really long time. But then if we look at the United States, Call of Duty Mobile has 3.5 million MAU. Delta Force has one and then it's all just trash. It's just like straight straight trash. zombie, fire 3D, heads-on, body cam, frontline heroes, but it has just been strange for me to look at the western mobile shooter market and I just can't figure out why no one other than Call of Duty seems to be able to break into this market.
I think the one thing that I found that is a bit interesting with the um the 50 million MAU number that I think Tensson announced it related to the release of Valerant Mobile that is only 50 million

when that was on the month of release. they may use for Valerant franchise shot over 50 million and they said that's more than double the franchise and and I think that's the interesting point that I found that a franchise that is as huge as Valerant was already doing really really great. You can more than double your MEU by releasing on mobile and and that was a bit of a surprise for me cuz I felt like such a game would be successful on mobile but I wouldn't think it would actually increase that MU uh so much. So maybe because like I'm looking at the west the list you mentioned that a lot of these games are actually big reestablished uh firstperson shooters or shooters that are already successful other than Call of Duty Delta Force and Warframe. So maybe that's what's missing in the West is actually maybe there's appetite for big franchises releasing on on mobile and that's the missing piece cuz again who who would have thought that there's like more players that want to play Valerant? I thought like they already were big enough but just releasing on

mobile brought so many new players.
So EA announced that they are hiring a VP of shooters for mobile and the role is going to report directly into Mr. Vince Zala the uh head of Respawn. The thing that we haven't covered here is also remember Apex Legends Mobile had an enormous success successful launch uh and it looked like it had some pickup in the west and from what we understand it was basically just a bunch of dealm and pissing matches that killed that game. It actually wasn't the numbers. It had a huge Chinese style launch. The other thing if you guys remember is Battlefield Mobile. If you remember Industrial Toys run by the former founder of Bungie ended up being purchased by EA. They were making a Battlefield Mobile game. I can tell you it was not good. Uh, you basically teleported between different characters. That's before the problem, the movement problem in in mobile shooters was solved and then they ended up pivoting to a more traditional mobile Battlefield shooter that has never seen the light of day. And I think this is the exact

signal to revive it.
I think with the success of Battlefield 6, there's probably more discussion of it occurring within EA. um at least for the successful launch of Battlefield 6 and the positive sentiment that players had about it. Uh it will be interesting to see what they end up doing. They may revive I mean I'm sure they still have all the source code. They may revive some of that and bring it back. Um I knew a lot of people that got laid off from that game. So if they bring it back, I wonder how they'll feel. But I think becoming the VP of shooters at EA is is a very challenging role or for mobile um will be a very challenging role just based on EA's history of mobile titles. like what have they really done in the last like I don't know 10 years like other than Galaxy of Heroes. Um it's going to be a really challenging space not just for mobile but also shooter on top of it. Um and so I think it's going to be very difficult role to fill. I would imagine we wouldn't see much for many years out of them on you know what their next projects are which could be it could be too late. There could be another game

coming in. I always love whenever another company enters this space because I want to see what they create. Um, I'm I'm I'm with optimism, but uh skepticism.
Why Why is it only Call of Duty that's succeeded in the West on mobile for shooters? I I can't I can't solve this. I understand why Call of Duty succeeded cuz it innovated on mobile controls, but I mean, look at Destiny Rising is a big franchise in the West. No one gives a [ __ ] about Destiny Rising, the Netis version. Uh, no one gave a [ __ ] about Warframe, although that wasn't really well optimized. Delta Force has some numbers here, but that will dissipate very rapidly. I cannot figure out for the life of me why none of these things will break out.
I feel there's a solid chance with um like let's let's play out this scenario. So we're talking about and and it's interesting because it's the role as VP of shooters in uh Respawn, not entirely a reporting to events means it's the Respawn or the Battlefield IPs, right? So I think there's a solid chance with EA releasing a shooter with a pre-established IP. Like I feel if you

release a Battlefield mobile as Chris mentioned with the follow up on Battlefield 6 or you release an Apex title on mobile actually invests a lot in user acquisition and play the long game there is a good chance. I just think when it comes to uh the west maybe the developers that are making shooters on mobile don't necessarily have a lot of shooter experience or if they have shooter experience they don't have a lot of mobile experience. I think this is why Call of Duty Mobile is an interesting uh success. It's it's coming from developers that have experience in both. I'm not saying that all the other developers that attempt to shooters don't have that, but I think that's what you need to have a successful shooter. You need not to only have very good solid shooter experience, but then you need to be very good at user acquisition as well. Know a lot about retention and know a lot how to make a shooter for mobile. And this type of developer is kind of, at least from experience, they're very rare in um in the west. Like it took Activision quite a while to release Call of Duty Mobile. I know they were trying to make it in multiple other

gaming mobile studios that they had before it actually eventually made it into this form because of that. They tried to give it they tried to I'm going to avoid the studios but basically they tried to give the the game to a mobile studio that didn't make shooters before and they struggled with that quite a bit. And then
you mean King had the version of
I think at some point they did have it. I'm not sure. It was just talk on the streets. But um so I think eventually it coming out like this is the is what resulted like that. That would be my theory on this. Um one theory I have is like I don't know uh the actual age range of these games but I would have to assume that Call of Duty although it does have like you know 35 plus year old men or whatever I have to imagine it does tend to lean younger than a Battlefield. And so I would assume that in the west not a lot of people who you know grew up on these games are really much mobile gamers kind

of like the Philip as you were kind of joking right like in the west mobile gaming is still not um looked at as like as prestigious as you know mouse and keyboard or whatever. Um but Call of Duty I think t tends to lean younger and Fortnite was also very popular which also was very younger. Um, a Battlefield mobile bubble though or or other known IPs in the shooter space. I feel like they tend to lean older which may just have be a challenge in the west because we're that's just not how we play mobile games but at least at least maybe Ginz will change that but at least you know for the existing shooter audience. I just don't know if it works. Very astute observation and you don't see Fortnite mobile in the list. I will update it because the way Censor Tower does subcategories, Fortnite mobile was not included in this. But Fortnite mobile, if you remember back to the Epic v Apple case, actually had a significant share of users on mobile. And I think I think for us you're on to something here and I think you as well, Chris, in terms of combining people who are basically

shooter stands, but also having to subvert yourself to the mobile paradigm is something that I think a lot of FPS developers in the west haven't been able to do. And if you remember, Call of Duty Mobile is developed by Timmy in China, but it was with Western product management. Matt Smith, who was over there, used to work at Scopely. And so I think that is a really good and it was the same case for Apex Legends Mobile uh which had western product management and Chinese development. And so when I think about being able to get this right, I think you need someone with western shooter knowledge, but someone who's able to bow down to the mobile medium and not only accept it, but embrace it. And I think that will be the key for for Battlefield Mobile is can you take Western product management? Can you take someone who understands mobile shooters in the west and can they ultimately figure out mobile uh with Chinese level content uh which is not an easy formula to get right cuz I mean Destiny Rising I mean that didn't have any [ __ ] Bungie

employees on it [laughter] you know from everything I understand no one gave a [ __ ] about that inside of Bungie.
I mean I I enjoyed it when it launched. I played the hell out of it when it launched but I I fell off pretty quick. Um, I think it actually had a relatively decent launch, but it retention I think it was like hit a wall.
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Speaking of hitting a wall, so I can just keep doing segways, we have a reveal trailer at the video game awards for a new exciting game called High Guard for us. Can you tell us more about what the hell a High Guard is? Yeah. So, I I actually I I kind of feel sad for the developers right now because this game is getting like a lot of negative attention on the internet and I don't think really it's it's worth it so much. So, I think it's it was the combination of um the trailer not really explaining what the game mode or the game is. The the graphics actually look really really cool. I'm I'm kind of would love to try this game and it's but I guess the trailer just didn't really explain what the game is like. people had to guess that it's somewhat of a hero shooter. But for me, when you look a bit more into the details of the trailer, which the majority of the people didn't. I think there's more to it than that. And

then there's the other part, the the way that it was revealed, it was like at the end of the game awards, it was like hyped as something you've never seen before. And then this is the thing that shows up. And I feel like I feel any any shooter that would have been like in that position would have just received like negative attention because of the place and the timing. So, uh, I I watched the trailer multiple times. I still don't understand really what's going on in the game mode, but I just want to say one thing, like I don't think this game will necessarily go the same path as Concord, which a lot of people are saying, even just for the price point. This game is free to play. If they make another trailer and then uh they managed to capitalize on the attention they're getting right now, I think people are going to try this out. I'll definitely try it out. Uh, I I'm not sure if it's a hero shooter purely. If it's a purely hero shooter, I think that space is a bit of a red ocean right now and it's really saturated. So, it's going to be really hard to pull users out. But if it's something more than that, then I think this game will be

played by people at least to see what it's all about.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think also we're in this era where because the term hero shooters like just tends to lean towards a lot of negative sentiments, they're coming up with new words. So, it's like they have abilities and they're unique each one, but we don't call them hero. We call them classes. You know, it's a class-based shooter. They they'll they're finding like different words uh because from a marketing perspective, it just feels like a massive negative sentiment to use the word heroes. Um but I I agree with everything Frost is saying. Like I mean I I will play this obviously. Um I think they were relying on the fact that it was X Respawn to really boost up that announcement. That's why they put it there at the end. It's like X Respawn should drive some sort of positive sentiment to it. I saw I was like I hadn't heard of this game, you know, like I work in the industry and I hadn't heard of it. So, they kept this under wraps like extremely well. Um, and I was excited to see, you know, obviously Respawn makes amazing shooters. Um, but it was just confusing and that's the only way I can say it's just confusing and I think that confusion leads to players building up their own narratives in their head. Like marketing did not control the narrative

of this law of this announcement. Um, and so now players are just going to spin. Is it a hero shooter? You going to have a bunch of Reddit posts going on and Twitter and all this stuff. and they just didn't control the narrative correctly in my opinion.
I just they just wanted to build up on the point. Yes. Like because it led with this is the uh from the ex-creators of Apex and Titanfall and they come from Respawn. Then you immediately start imagining specific things,
right?
And I think you're right. This is like you you kind of lose the narrative at this point. And I feel like a lot of the Game Award announcements aren't really catered for especially like the last final announcement is usually where you'll have something Metal Geares over there. So combining those two things saying these are the X Respawn guys. Well, Respawn made also some single player games. So maybe the play like I don't know what the audience was thinking at that point, but they weren't thinking this. You want to surprise the audience, but I'm not sure you want to surprise them in this way. That's why again I feel like a bit sad for the devs because this is the reveal of their

game. They was probably worked when I'm sure they worked really hard on this and it doesn't look bad. It looks like a good game. It's just I don't think it was revealed with the right context.
As someone who's also coming in fresh without having seen this at the game awards, this looks [ __ ] great. So for people aren't familiar, you're seeing a lot of mounted combat. It's a fantasy IP. You're you're in some sort of like middle eastern like if you remember too human uh maybe not a great reference as well. gives me a lot of two Cuban vibes from Boware. It's got kind of this sci-fi fantasy feel. You've got mounts like you've got this eagle going off one of the the players arms. It clears it feels fresh to me that I haven't seen this in shooters before. This kind of like setting. And the thing that they also seem to be emphasizing in the trailer is a movement, which to me is like one of the key innovations that Respawn brought to not only Titanfall, but to Apex Legends. If you remember the sliding and your ability to build momentum, being able to get that feel down was really, really important. And if you remember Black Ops 6 had omniirectional movement, getting movement right has been to me one of the

core innovations of shooters in the last 10 years. Like if you go back and you play, if you go back and you play like Call of Duty 2, there's no sprint, right? There's no sliding. There's none of this. It it feels like it's a different era. It feels like an outdated design. And I've been waiting for someone to take this to the next level. And so this feels it feels like this has a really really interesting thesis. I'm I'm not quite sure about the setting up to be honest with you. I'm not quite sure if I want to be riding mounts, but no one has really taken movement to the next level. And yeah, I I agree that this was a reveal expectation problem and I don't understand the comparisons to Conquered at all. The problem with Conquered that I had no no ideas that were interesting. That to me was a problem with that game that there was nothing interesting about it. Uh it was a mess from from top to bottom. The IP was a mess. The gameplay was boring. there there are no new ideas and I at least see new ideas here. The problem is that Reddit just rallies like once Reddit has set an agenda. Once once the gamer community with a capital G has set an agenda, it becomes ruthlessly beaten down. It's it's like this bandwagoning

effect. Uh once once the agenda has been aligned that's extremely hard to predict and manage for brand marketers. I don't think anyone anyone's really figured it out yet, right? And it goes in the opposite direction. No one gives no one gives a [ __ ] to Valve, right? or or we're just talking about AI for Balders Skate 3. There was some minor announcement that they're using AI. Redden didn't give a [ __ ] but they would have given a [ __ ] if anyone else did it. It's very hard to figure out these rules.
Yeah, I think it's a it's a marketing nightmare or a branding nightmare for sure. And I don't and uh I don't know if it's been figured out, but I can say like this is not it. That's the only thing I could say. This is definitely not the way to control the narrative. And I I feel really bad for the devs, too, because you know 95% of the devs have no like influence on what this trailer is going to be. they're just making the game, you know, and so it is it is really challenging. I wonder watching it too as I watch it again if it's going to have some uh like deadlock design. Is this like a kind of deadlock mobile FPS style?
You know, you can This is kind of the difficulty is kind of allow players to been in their head of what possibly could this be. I mean, at the end of the

day, depending on who from Respawn is on this, I would assume it will have great movement, great feel, satisfying gameplay. it would have all the stuff that you would want. But I kind of feel like the whole good movement, satisfying gameplay is just the norm now. It's not a differentiator. And so you have to find the new the thing that is the differentiation. Um, and I don't think this trailer expresses what that what that is.
You don't think the mounts were enough like riding on the horse?
I mean, to be fair, that that is that is totally fair. I think the mounts were a cool thing. I think they started with the mounts, too. So, like one of the first things you see are are writing amounts, which I yeah, like I you're right that I think that is a that is a really good um way to show a differentiation for sure.
I think part of the differentiation they're leaning into, which I think also it's not explained in the trailer, I think it's also the game mode cuz like look, when they're riding on the mounts, they're shooting some smaller, weaker enemies. I don't think these other players maybe they are, but is there like a PVE part of the game?
Yeah, they call it rage shooter. PVP

rage.
Yeah, but but that's what I mean. Like if if they if they if I'm a new worst, [laughter]
we'll see if we can get a headline out of that.
Yeah.
Yeah. I wish this explained the game mode a bit more.
I mean, I feel like all the USPS are in this trailer. I I don't think they're subtle either. I think this I think it's fine. If you show What do you do to win in this game? Is is what's
sick? Yeah, it looks sick, but you know what do I what what am I what am I doing?
All I want to do is sell these mounts, though. As soon as I see this, it's like the easiest layup in monetization is like [ __ ] [ __ ] $40 tiger mount. You've just got to deal with the like the the way I've often drawn a comparison to dealing with Reddit is that essentially this gunpowder model where you don't know if someone's going to light up a cigarette and the whole barrel will expose explode, but you do have some level of autonomy over how much gunpowder you put in that barrel. We know what is

additive gunpowder. If you have a cosmetic item that's above $20, that's going to throw in some gunpowder. If you if you have any sort of gameplay element, even if it's horizontal that's monetized, that's going to add some gunpowder to the model. If you're a paid game that changes expectations, that that changes the barrel that the gunpowder is in. Um, I I think you you have some level of control over that. But whether or not that cigarette butt gets lit and you explode, I think you have almost no autonomy over that. I think that that is a narrative you can't control. It's only the gunpowder. You know, if you're an Eastern developer, you get a free pass. No one gives a [ __ ] like what Crossfire does because Reddit can't rage at them. Play free. Yeah. Play. And this is coming in January, guys.
That was that was surprising, too. That was pretty sweet.
Do Do you think this is cuz I I think boom boom is the right way to to to do launches. It's like this is what Apple does.
I mean, it was their it was the Apex strategy. Like Respawn has a history of doing this. Well, maybe the developers on this from Respawn have a history of

doing it as well from Apex.
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do a six new hero every six months? And they've actually tighten that schedule even more. And yet, when I start to look at the relative success of Marvel Rivals, it feels like it is in a meh place. And I did a little bit of backup of the envelope math based on what the DAU is using video game insights data. And so I got around five to eight million MAU across console and PC. And so if we take some different monthly ARPO numbers, let's go from.7 to $6, which I think is reasonable for a cosmetic economy, especially one without loot boxes. And to be honest with you, Marvel Rivals' monetization is awful. It is awful. was almost non-existent. I've been surprised at how much of a failure it's been. They really shift it on a more western paradigm when it comes to this. But even if we were to say, hey, let's say $4, you know, maybe you're looking at a $300 million run rate, but I think based on the assumptions I would make, I'd put it closer to $2 in terms

of monthly ARPO. And so that gives you a run rate of around $180 million. And if you factor in licensing costs and how many developers in China are on this game and remember Chinese wages are rising, ladies and gentlemen, it's not super cheap to do development over there. They're now outsourcing to Vietnam. So they're not just an outsourcer. They an outsourcer who's outsourcing, which is exactly what you'd expect as a country gets richer. I think this game isn't a failure, but it is kind of just a mediocre game that I don't think is going to be able to maintain at its current run rate. I don't think Ned Eis is happy with this. And to me, that basically cast out on this whole arms race we talk about in terms of content. I don't think they won by releasing a new hero in six weeks or less. I don't think that's done a lot for their numbers. I think when I look at Overwatch and what they've done with Stadium and a lot of their ropelike mode, even with a far fewer headcount, and even though the game hasn't significantly grown since they've released that mode, they've been at least able to maintain. And again, we don't have the Blizzard.net numbers.

We're only looking at Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox here, but they've been able to at least survive Marvel rivals. And to me, that strategy was choosing productivity. Choosing systems that get you a number of retention units per developer hour is far higher in Overwatch than it is in Rivals. And so I don't know, Chris, you talk a lot about love bombing, talk a lot about like the supply side, and I I'm usually with you, but this I think is a lot of cold water on the arms race thesis and the east coming to destroy us.
I mean, listen, I'm an I'm an eastern live service stand, you know, but I would say that I've always had this thought in hero shooters. I don't there's like I haven't found like ne hard data to to prove this, but when you release characters so quickly, I feel like it's a massive deterrent for new players because it just adds more and more layers of complexity to the new user experience. And so, usually I would say releasing a lot of the heroes is very good for the elder audience cuz

they're burning through the content, they're finding new strategies, new metas, all this stuff. But for new players, it just adds a deeper and deeper complexity to learning the game. And so by releasing so quickly, I feel like they kind of burnt their early funnel too soon. Um, and so now where they're landing is they're landing, you know, probably with a relatively stable audience. I don't know if it'll I I don't imagine it will grow, but I don't really know if it'll drop either. And so I think this kind of ceiling that you're talking about, Philip, is is a is an interesting perspective to look at it. Um, because it launched very well. I mean, it I was, you know, obvious I'm a skeptic of most hero shooters. Um, and I had a great time in this game. it launched with kind of everything you could ask for, but that rapid release I think just becomes overwhelming um for a certain audience. Um I just think they burnt that early funnel too soon.
Yeah, I think it's the question of like it's not if you could make a hero in like four to six week is is if you should right early on especially I don't think it's you need that amount of content when the game is just really

fresh. You really need to focus on systems, quality of life fixes, iterate on the community's feedback and the community will sorry the content will help like retain those players but the focus shouldn't be entirely on content early on but once you flood the game with extra content it will happen the way as you said Chris I think maybe the maybe it's a good thesis for us to see it like uh maybe that's not what we should strive for in the west like releasing if you're working on a hero shooter releasing a huge amount of heroes because we have now something that kind of proves that that's that's not really what's going to keep the players u in the game. On the on the other end, I think the game is performing really well. Looking at the numbers you were just showing us, Phil, we shouldn't underplay that this is a an eastern developer entering the western market. And from the graphs you've shown, they're very close to Overwatch and uh Apex Legend. Obviously, Overwatch is the numbers are a bit lower than they really are. So, I think the performance is not bad. we should not like sell this game short. But I definitely agree with

Chris on the um especially in a hero shooter or a game where you have that type of content, you need to be aware of overwhelming the players cuz one really cool system that was in my arrivals that I thought was pretty cool is the synergy system between the heroes. So if you pick specific heroes, you get different abilities. I think they were passives or activives, I forgot. And I thought that was really smart because now you're encouraging the players to have mains and seconds and all that sort of stuff. you. So, you encourage the players to buy cosmetics for different heroes, but then that system becomes really overwhelming when you have too many of those heroes. I have this challenge as well with like whenever I try to get into Rainbow Blue Six Siege, the amount of operators they have is huge cuz I'm like trying to enter the game now after 8 years of live service. So, as as Chris said, you need to be careful with the core content that you're expecting the players to master and not to overflow the game with it. And for retention, it's always better to rely on systems and mastery rather than pure content.

Oh, you know, oh, uh, in my opinion, for like the rapid release of content, it's really about like feeding the core loop, not making the core loop more complex. And releasing this type of content just makes the core loop more complex rather than feeding what's already there. And I think you're right, too. They launched with a ton of characters. I can't remember the number, but it was a lot. So, like, there is months of effort if you want to really learn that game that's just in the base product. It's a great, you know, uh, thing to say to players from like a marketing perspective and it it sounds good. Um, but in practice, maybe it's just not, uh, the right direction to go. And again, I would, I would second, too, like this is not a failure. I would, you know, not saying this game is a failure at all. I think it's it's impressive what it's been able to do in this space. It already felt kind of like it was on its leg. It's like last leg. I think it says a lot about hero shooters. Hero shooters is just a market that's been tapped out. We were just talking about Highguard and the reaction to it. conquered. You know, I was I've been writing about match three recently as well, and Royal Kingdom has just come into a market that is feels like it's reached equilibrium. The next 10 million players are not hiding underneath a new

character, right? There there isn't any innovation in terms of core mechanics. I mean, synergy, yeah, I might give that to you for us, but that's extremely minor in terms of its influence over the core experience, but there's been very little movement in innovations in the genre except for Overwatch and Stadium, which I think introduces a lot of really interesting inound progression. But there's almost no innovation in Marvel Rivals and for a genre that's already tapped out. I think you need to have innovation. I mean, we're talking about arc raiders. This was the exact time where you need innovation is before the genre has also like it hasn't reached equilibrium yet. there isn't a a standard set of constraints yet where you're going back to Sidmer rule of 33% old, 30% new, 33% um improved and it felt like Marvel Rivals didn't have any of the innovation pieced out. Uh which I was very confused by. It was just trying to shove shove more more sausage through the grinder and I don't think that Grinder was was well optimized. Would you guys think they would have done better if they they went with the League of Legends model and they sold heroes and then had some free heroes rotating?

I mean, wouldn't that solve the I don't overwhelm players?
It it might have, but I'm not sure the players are dropping out because they're overwhelmed. I think the players are dropping out because there was maybe so much focus on the amount of heroes that they feel
it's it's a bit trickier to master them and fight against them, etc. Like I feel even in League of Legends, I used to play a lot of Dota, so I'm not necessarily going to comment on LOL, but in Dota, I feel if you added if you added
if you added a new hero every three or four weeks, I would find that overwhelming quite a bit. Even if I'm not buying them, I'm just like it it changes the game quite a bit.
You're still playing against them,
I think. Yeah, just playing against them becomes a headache because you're not sure what you do. It's one of the reasons also you I don't I'm not sure if players that cuz I know shooter players are not monogous. They switch between different shooters, but I don't think they switch between different hero shooters. You have a certain level of mastering the different characters that doesn't really carry so much between hero shooters. So, I approach them like I think of MOBAs and I think maybe

that's the way that maybe you should approach content in these uh type of games. And I just wanted to comment on the innovation piece. I think you're right, Philip. They are limited in terms of innovation and rivals. What they've done is they have the Marvel IP. So, they just took something that exists, relied so much on the Marvel IP, and I think they polished the [ __ ] out of the UI in that game. Like, I still remember how everything looked extremely beautiful
that just looking at it from the outside, people wanted to come in and play it. So, you know, maybe what would be like a big spike if Marvel gets their like [ __ ] together and release like a really really solid Marvel movie, maybe they'll spike up back again. I'm not sure they even re need a lot of innovation when you have an IP like that. So maybe this is why they didn't put so much money in innovation there. But I agree with you that it's a bit limited in this game.
I um I completely reject this this thesis you guys are advancing because like the model to me that you're suggesting here is that there's an optimal number of heroes and that number is not monotonically increasing. Like

there is at some point like if they were to release a hero like every two weeks. we're almost saying or even the six week schedule that they're on that it's almost retentive destructive and if they slow down that pace retention would increase. That's at least what I'm teasing out of the suggestion here which which may not be an accurate representation of what you're saying but I I would reject that.
I think I mean I think that uh I think you are kind of understanding my thesis correctly. I would say that it's not it doesn't apply to like a game that's you know 8 years into a live service like Siege. But I think for a game coming out, that's kind of the key difference here is that my perspective is that you kind of burnt that early funnel in order to get those players deeply engaged. And so I do think releasing heroes that quickly is a negative retention hit for that newer audience. Not for elder players. Elder, you know, I would assume elder players in the hero space want this um because it's it just it alters the meta, the thing they like about these games. Um, but for a new launch with these this amount of new players, I

don't know. I do feel like it has some negative impact on early retention.
So, so to me that the easy solution here would be one that most games already do and including Rainbow Six Siege X, which I would love to talk about in shooter monthly episode 4 is the disaster that was. But a lot of these games are saying here's a here they have a single tab and I forget if Marvel Rivals does about hey this this hero is good for new players. Um, they do this for a lot of MOA games as well, which really helps me as a new player understand which one has simple mechanics for me to master. And if it really was the case that even with that UX label, it's not enough, well then just make the heroes unlockable, right? Because when that thesis or that theory crises, it's that they have to learn how to play against a bunch of new heroes. M
so like yes you can master one character but then a new character comes out and you have to learn now how to defeat that character. It's not that you're playing it. Um it's that when you jump into a game because a lot of this is about it's there's a lot of rock paper scissors and so as you as you make that rock paper scissors more complex you have to start

to remember okay like how does how does this character go against this character? Um, and if it's a new character every four weeks, you're having to relearn that, which again, I think for an elder dedicated audience is very good. But for newer players who are still not, they're learning their character and now also have to learn their character against an ever evolving uh, defense, which I think is very challenging.
If we were to think about Clash Royale, which has an answer to this, which is that you have those different arenas that you progress as you earn trophies, they actually expand and introduce new cards into the pool at those additional trophies. Do you think that's something that's missing from Marvel Rivals that would be better if they kind of tiered the pools of characters? I mean, you split your matchmaking pool, which is a problem. There's a match there's a CCU issue here, but do you think that would be a better design?
I think Yeah, I mean, I think I think it's a really interesting kind of solution to this problem. And you're right, Clash Royale did do this. And I I remember when I played Clash Royale, like I did like that sense of progression. And it's also more goals. I can't wait to get to this level so I can play this character. Um, instead of having it all open up right away. That

definitely could be a solution to the early retention, I
think. But I think you're right, the matchmaking part is going to be tricky cuz if I remember correctly, that that part of Clash Royale, you did play against a lot of bots
early on, maybe to ease into the game as well, but but I think it's also because of the matchmaking. I think for a shooter, especially if you're showing us the number of users have dropped like that, that might be a bit uh tricky. But yes, the the solution as a system works, I would say, but the matchmaking might be a headache.
I think the the only other thing I'll say about Marvel Rivals is I I think there are problems with the core gameplay. I think the core gameplay is very spammy. It's relying on a lot of melee action rather than shooter action. Which is why I mean, you know, when we're talking about shooter monthly, it almost didn't appear to me that or it wasn't obvious to me that Marvel rivals would be a part of our conversation. Or as you think about Overwatch, if we were to compare the number of shooting characters versus melee characters. I mean, this is the reason it's third person, right? Is when it you're in melee, it's far easier to understand combat when the the camera is zoomed

out, but it feels like a button masher. It's hard to follow action. I think there are a lot of problems in the core gameplay that they didn't solve here. And again, they're they're shoving a lot of sausage down a, you know, a meat grinder that wasn't optimized yet. And like, no one in HD does soft launches, right? It's either go big or go home and then have some play tests with friends and family beforehand. That's the only validation you get in HD. Any closing thoughts, gentlemen, for shooter monthly episode 3.
It's been good. What a crazy year. And I'm supportive of having soft launches [sighs and gasps] and in HD. I think mobile has really got this like it's it's very stressful to release an HD title.
[laughter]
So I think mobile soft launches would be a nice thing to have for HD or AAA overall.
HD soft launches I feel are more of a marketing problem than like a product problem because how do you you know if you soft launched you know when you're soft launching a game as like from a AAA developer in the west the the no matter how many times you say this is early

development or whatever there's going to be a [ __ ] ton of opinions that are going to impact the long term of the game but a mobile you can just be like okay we're going to release in Chad in Africa and get some users you know like can't really do that in HD
classic region. Yeah.
See what the Chads think. We should talk about this one more. I think this is an interesting topic that will that uh that we'll come back. All right. Cool beans. Gentlemen,
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