Shooter Monthly #7: Marathon’s Collapse, Apex’s Comeback, & Disney’s Extraction Shooter

From interviews that Nikita did with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, his exact words were, "We are not fill in the blank extraction shooter. We are a hardcore, painful, miserable extraction shooter." I'm not reading a quote, but that was the sentiments that I got off [laughter] of him. This game is going to ship early next year from Bungie, and this is the first time anybody has ever seen it. It's the first time they've debuted it.
[music]
The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology [music] for the time. And there's one more thing we'll bring to Battlefield. I love that chainsaw. I had to fight for that. Programming one of your buildings, you know, they're on another level when they're on 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 [music] new additions to your squad is a dog. Hey, is that about ready? These things, they take time.

Da na na na. Shoo. Shooter Monthly Episode 7. Four out of four in the chamber today, ready to give you liquid bullets, I don't know. Melting, smelting hot takes. I'm joined today by Mr. Christopher Anjos. Mr. Anjos, how are you? Hey, now. Good to be here. I'm also joined by Mr. Sides, Mr. Chris Sides. How are you? Hello, doing well. And also, if you would like to play a game my indie studio is making, go to jimmiejumps.com. It's a nice little retro game, just throw back, easy five bucks, have some fun. We're not doing any crazy live services, you know. Just a small little game if you want to have some fun. So, yeah, go to jimmiejumps.com. Link in the description. Yeah. Buy the DLC pack. Just give me a deluxe edition. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. $100, send you a statue of Jimmy. It's like 2D retro guy. Thank you.
[snorts]
And for us

Ni hao. Are you you're back from China? I am back from my trip. I am adjusting to the jet lag, but it's sunny in Stockholm. I'm pre-ordering Chris Sides that's already live.
[laughter]
So things are good. Appreciate your purchase. Yeah, thank you. We have a full clip of topics as the puns keep coming. We have saving marathon, a soap opera drama, Days of Our Lives, which we'll be talking about. The numbers are in free fall. Is it all over? Chris Sides is going to take another victory lap as we talk about Disney's rumored extraction shooter. Art graders has a new update. What's going on there? Has Embark made a fatal mistake? Division Resurgence is a mobile game. Remember this podcast covers all shooters in shapes and sizes. We love We're we're we're genre positive image here. And so Division Resurgence is a mobile game. We'll be talking about that. There's actually PC console implications that I think are really

interesting. There's a CS2 update Chris Sides will talk about. And then oh my god, Apex Legends has come roaring back. 2.18 million DAU. What's driving it? So without further ado, should we talk about marathon? Eiffel Tower, iconic. Tower of London, historic. The two towers, simply epic. But none of them tell you anything about mobile app intelligence. Downloads, revenue, active users, and my personal favorite, weekly cohort retention. Get the real story, get the real data, get Sensor Tower today. Web stores, you see what good looks like, but have you experienced great? AppCharge is the direct-to-consumer platform that powers over half a billion dollars in transactions each year for top studios. They're not just another vendor. They're backed by Supercell and built by monetization veterans from Moon Active, Playtika, and other industry giants who understand the difference

between merely functional and the truly exceptional. What sets them apart? Deeply personalized web stores with custom design offers, industry-leading monetization features, seamless in-game payment integration, and a robust SDK. While 70% of top-grossing games already have web stores, the ones scaling the fastest are doing it with AppCharge. Ready to transform good into great? Learn more at appcharge.com. Marathon. What is happening to Bungie's child? Has anything improved, gentlemen? The CCU concurrent users on Steam for Marathon are equal, if not lower than Destiny's CCU on Steam, which is worth noting. And as someone who's played Marathon a lot, and as someone who's played extraction shooters a lot, I love the game, which may be part of

the challenge here. The game basically onboards players directly into late-stage extraction shooter psychology immediately. A big difference between a game like Arc Raiders, which has a very PvE, very hand-holding onboarding for when you play the game, it's remarkable and fascinating to me that both and Marathon feels like they were developed in total a vacuum of each other. There are innovations within Marathon that are great in the extraction genre that are not in Arc Raiders, and vice versa, there are amazing innovations in the in the genre in Arc Raiders that are not in Marathon. And a game I have I'm playing in my head is who is going to lift each other's features first. So, I think that Marathon is salvageable, and I think Marathon should be saved. I think Marathon's experience, gameplay, is the value proposition, is the unique selling points, deserves to be around long enough so everyone

listening to this and everyone every gamer in the world has a chance to play Marathon at least once before they die. It is that good and it's worth playing. Mr. Antres, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but we have to interrupt for this very important message. DAU is down from a half a million across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox to what VGI is estimating as maybe 120,000. Have you ever seen a game take a U shape? I mean, it is a dramatic linear decline in DAU. Is there anything left? I'm not super surprised. So, I'm going to give you my anecdotal win rates metrics, okay? As a veteran player, me playing the game, I have, no joke, on average a 30% win rates when I play, meaning I get in the game, I get something good, and I extract out. That's 30%, and that's a veteran's perspective. No other game comes to mind where, if you tell an average player, there's a

70% chance that you will lose, will they play another game after that? That experience is very spicy and for a very hardcore niche player. If 20 people made Marathon, what we're seeing right now would be a success, but 20 people did not make Marathon. To answer your question, Phil, no, I have not seen such a dip in a game this scale this fast. I would say if there's like an optimistic perspective here is that their DAU is taking for sure, but the starting peak is relatively small compared to the market. And so, the kind of positive side here is that you can say, "Okay, our DAU is bad, but there's still a massive audience that has never even purchased or installed the game. And so the question in my opinion for season 2 would be like how do we get that audience? I worry a bit that they may be thinking too much about how to cater to the existing audience based on like whatever their plans are for this season. Like if it's going to be things like these shotgun tuning that they've been doing

or like some of the matchmaking changes. Like these may be more targeted to existing players. And I would say that there's still a broad audience that just has not even tried or experienced it. So in my opinion the kind of quote-unquote way to save this moving forward is to really understand how to capture that audience that just never installed it. Like there's still a a well of players there that just haven't experienced yet. And that's like in the last podcast I in a maybe tongue-in-cheek way but also in some serious way I talked about like an arena mode. Of course free-to-play is an option. It takes a lot of time and work to get there. They can do but something to grab this massive base that they just have not even touched yet. So I think in my opinion the players that are playing is kind of like a zero. Let's just get the players that haven't even tried it yet. That would be my kind of optimistic approach to dealing with the next season. Would you consider something like in the next season or in the future beginner only queues? Would that be a matchmaking change or would that be something that's beyond just matchmaking? I really think it's about

bringing people into the game to enjoy the gunplay that Bungie is so good at and then moving them on towards the extraction experience. That's really why I think like the arena mode or free-to-play just to get them in because it once you play Marathon and you feel the shooting excitement and just the stuff that Bungie is good at, you will become hooked. The problem right now is just the extraction narrative, the hardcore narrative. As you're saying like most of us have played a lot of extraction shooters. So having a 30 to 40% survival rate for like experienced players is rough. That is a very core demographic. And so if you're trying to get players to install it, that is just not fun for most people who play shooters. When I pushed you on this last cast, you pushed back on me, too, but let me try to sell you on this again. Why can't you go softer on the systems design? Why not pull the system design so much softer than what it is right now? So, you could remove the amount of people who get spawned into a given shard. Like, that's one way to decrease difficulty, potentially. You could

reduce enemy health. You could add insurance slots. You could make the amount of loot that's distributed more plentiful. Like, there are things this game could do around the edges. Like, why wouldn't you plan go soft update 2.0? I don't disagree that there's like stuff around the existing core loop that you can soften up for those players. But, the thing is is like you have to have those players. They just don't even exist. So, like, sure, you can do all of this in work tuning to make it feel more player-friendly, but you have to have the players. And they don't have the players. I don't disagree with you, but when I look at a linear decrease in DAU, what I see is a leaky bucket. They're definitely not stacking DAU. We don't know what their retention figures are, but I see something that's fundamentally broken. This is a failed extraction shooter. I just don't think there's any other way to put it, and I say this as someone who deeply loves what this game is trying to say. But, the only winner we now have is our graders. Everything becomes a contrast to our

graders. Obviously, none of us is happy about what's happening to this game, cuz it's, you know, it's a good game, and it's a very good team. So, for me, like, the key questions you always ask yourself is, why didn't the players didn't show up to this game? And as soon as it addressed that in a way, yeah, you get to the details of how we can turn this game around. I think there's some elements that you cannot really change so much that they not appeal to some players. Like for example, I love how the game looks, but it could be that sort of looks that could not really attract a specific kind of audience. Maybe that's something that's inherent in the game, but it's also one of the things that makes the game stand out. I would focus on the other ones. Making the game easier gradually, making it more accessible, finding more ways that is welcoming to the users. And then finding ways to acquire a huge amount of

new users. And my guess from the outside of perspective, that's the stuff that Bungie was probably planning. They haven't done any free weekends right now. So, most probably the retention numbers internally aren't good enough for that cuz when you have an acquisition problem, but your retention numbers are good enough, then you will acquire more users and most probably you'll keep them. A free weekend or a discount, etc. can do that. They haven't done that. So, my guess is the numbers internally aren't looking so great. So, my guess is they're refining these numbers, hopefully building up a plan of how these numbers are going to be better, and then pushing for that big reacquisition bid. I don't feel that this Sony marketing for this game has been strong. So, I think maybe internally they were worried about it or at least from the outside of perspective, it just doesn't feel like this is a first-party Sony title. I haven't seen the big push for acquisition yet. And this is why also a lot of users didn't show up. So, there must be adjustments happening there is is what I'm thinking right now.

And for us, if I could kind of amend what you mentioned as well. And if I could piggyback off it to what you and Mr. Sai said as well, with a free weekend or a going free-to-play, my concern is unless they tackle the onboarding issues which I've highlighted lightly in this conversation, and if they go free-to-play, we'll see the exact same decay curve at a larger scale over time It my concern. And there are, I think, low-hanging fruit ways to adjust it. I I do like what you mentioned, Mr. Phil Black, when it comes to just spawning less players on a map. See what See what happens with that. Being more PvE indexed in certain cases, or at least at for new for beginners in the onboarding sections of the game. And even with the Cryo Archive update, the at least day-to-day concurrent player uplift was marginal when that map launched. I don't have any incentive information, I so I don't know how much of an impact

the Cryo Archive launch was when it came out across all platforms internally, but if you're looking at just Steam charts, you wouldn't even know that a new a big update even happened. And I'll be paying the same attention when season 2 drops. That being said, I do think going from low-hanging fruit to more expensive ways to add to the game would help. For example, if Cryo Archive is a strong end goal for players to achieve, but getting there takes a week's worth of play time or {quote} work to even get the key cards to access and gear to go into Cryo Archive, having a map that gives players opportunity to gear up before Cryo Archive could be a solution. I'll give you an example. In the game DMZ, the extraction mode for Call of Duty, there was a map called Building 21 where players could go in to a very small map, very PvP focused, very arena shooter indexed, and be able to get out with very good

gear. So, I think a middle ground or a middle ground map that allows players to take part on the stronger aspects of the game in Marathon, in this case of shooting and movements, in a smaller map, which gives them the opportunity to come in {quote} naked and come out geared up well enough to at least take part in Cryo Archive would be a big win and a great win-back moment for the game to get players to play the game, beginner or otherwise, and then take part in the real promise of the game, which is in Cry Archive. Can you explain the archive feature that they released? Cry Archive is a map with uh let's call it end game or end game raids like in Destiny 2, where players individually or as a team have to get gather key cards, access gear, gear up, for example, like gold shield shields and the like, and be spawned into a map, and the first part of the map essentially is taking out very highly geared, highly skilled players, and then

taking part in like the PvE aspects of that where you have to fight a boss. But, you don't have to kill players in Cry Archive. It just makes it easier, so when you fight the boss of Cry Archive, you don't have people third-partying. And you get really good gear if you get out. Extraction shooters have essentially open economies because the ability to drop loot, and it for it to be compressed means that there is transfer. So, like, if you funnel resources into one part of the mode, like, if you funnel prestige level items in, players will die and they'll drop those, and those will circulate throughout the economy. And don't be wrong, it's deflationary pressure everywhere because you're constantly losing gear, but just to remember that there's a circular flow that all these consequences flow back to, which I think becomes an interesting part. I mean, we know Tarkov has faced its own set of crises around this. Tarkov also started investing heavily in PvE modes towards the later end of his life cycle. Since we don't have access to his full player account numbers, it's hard to tell how beneficial that was for them. Speaking of life cycles, the

creator of Tarkov, who is active on Twitter, Nikita, he has a side project. It has been unveiled. There is a trailer for it. We're watching it right now. It is called Fragmentary Order. It is set in space. I don't think we Do we know much more about it, gentlemen? We know the setting, it's set in space, there's sci-fi elements. From interviews that Nikita did with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat, his exact words were, "We are not fill in the blank extraction shooter, we are a hardcore, painful, miserable extraction shooter." I'm not really a quote, but that was the sentiments that I got off of it.
[snorts]
Very hardcore, very I don't know how niche, but hey, space is in. There's been space shooters before there was a space Call of Duty shooter that I actually think we covered on this podcast. Boundary. So, what I struggle with is if Boundary didn't work, why can any space game work? So, Boundary, if you guys

remember, was a game that was set in space, had a lot of Call of Duty-like mechanics. I believe it was from an Eastern dev, and failed. And the tricky part about all these space games is that you have multiple dimensions of figuring out where you're going to get shot from. Which made this extremely complicated. I actually played this game. So, we're watching footage of Boundary right now. But again, you're transversing in a new a new plane, cuz remember, you can float. So, you can get shot from upside down, which increases your probability usually of getting shot when it's out of range, or it increases the distance you have to move your cursor to be able to kill someone, because they can again, they can be in like parts of their screen they're not usually. So, we haven't seen gameplay of Fragmentary Order. So, I don't know if it's going to be full 3D, or there'll be just aspects of it, or if it's just a setting. That being said, it is also going to be, I think, an

extraction shooter. So, different win conditions. Mhm. Maybe it'll be stickier, because when playing a game like an arena shooter PvP game like this, it has a lot to do with very clear sightlines. And almost a sports regulation of rules where everyone abides by. In an extraction shooter, it's less to do with combat, more to do with stealth, maneuvering, and also opportunity to third party. What I I find interesting is like our greatest is is a sci-fi shooter and it went mainstream, but I would say that's maybe the exception, right? Like whenever there is a Call of Duty that decides to go so much into the future or goes sci-fi or goes into space, you you know immediately like, "Okay, that's not going to be a good year for COD." Same for Battlefield, no shame. For example, I I really love Hunt Showdown, but I think one of the things that might have scared people off is because there's a little bit of the

marketing and the themes around it that is more of a horror shooter. I guess what I'm saying out there is as soon as you brand your game around sci-fi or horror, there's a huge risk that you will just like lose a lot of players from being interested in the game and you immediately become a bit nichey. Having said that, if they are what they said and just like they basically said we're a hardcore, miserable, painful shooter, maybe they're going for the niche and they're finding the niche within the niche that people love pain and suffering and space shooters, but I think I would be a bit worried by the amount of audience they can attract. That could work with fragmentary order. Because I doubt that there's like over 100 people working on this game. And I don't think the game is being made in these United States. If I had a bet, it's probably being made in Russia or perhaps even Uzbekistan or Eastern Europe somewhere. So, there's riches in niches so long as the budgetary scale is accounted for. And whenever people talk

about Marathon, whether it's doing well or not, that's not the only question to ask, it's also the scale of the niche that they're going after. Again, if 20 people made Marathon, it would be huge success. If 20 people like in Russia made it, awesome with this player count, but that's not the case. Yeah, I fully agree with that. It's also You're right. Like Escape from Tarkov, for example, they the amount of devs is much smaller than what you would see on a big title, and that is why it's it's considered a massive success. So But yeah, it's it's hard for me to comment on the scale more than the theme cuz there's not a lot of gameplay out there, but as you're saying, there's riches in in the in the niches, so let's see where this one go, but I don't see it blowing up to be super huge based on the theme by itself. I don't know. I remember very early days looking at thematic like themes of games and where they landed, and it did seem like space and sci-fi was a much more like not even Western, just like North American theme.

Like it seemed like Europeans and APAC didn't really care about that theme. I don't know if anybody else has like maybe any anecdotal experience cuz when I think of space, it's like you know, that's Halo. You know, it's like hell yeah, but that is also like it's Xbox, which is like incredibly North American. So I don't know how it translates. Yeah. Well, I mean true, [clears throat] I guess Japan is kind of has a lot of that stuff, too. Maybe they're a carve out in the in the groupings. But yeah, I remember looking in like space and sci-fi was just not very popular amongst like European and many Asian countries.
I mean, there might be a causal reason. Like who who grabbed all the fame?
Well, China's got the taikonauts or whatever they're called. They're going to the moon. I actually think there's a serious correlation between that and interest in space. Speaking of how's your national program doing, Our Creators has a new update, but the game finds itself How would you describe it? Is it in dire constraints? We're looking at daily active users from Video Game Insights again across Steam, PlayStation, Xbox. It was hitting around

2 and 1/2 to 3 million DAU, which is extremely impressive, but since February, it's been on basically a linear decline. It just stabilized around 1 million. So again, that's a drop of about a third of where it was in its height around Christmas time. Gentlemen, did Embark make a mistake here? Should they have thrown everything behind this and abandoned The Finals? Are they just make not making strong enough content? What's What's wrong? What's wrong in extraction shooter paradise? So, as someone who plays both The Finals and Our Graters, my response may be surprising. You may like this, Phil. Our Graters, I think its strongest suit, at least in the beginning of the game, is how it handle its economic design choices, where you had two different types of players with two different goals in the same map, sharing the same goals and not killing each other. I would go so far to say that the PvP, to me, would be the health metric of the game. The higher the PvP, the lower the

health of the game, because people only PvP when they have nothing else to do in Our Graters. And I called this out when the game came out, is that its economic applications of the game with its gear and its scrap and everything else is great, but it requires maintenance. I don't know how much they've been maintaining their economic tools now compared to launch, or whether or not they're focused more on the content side of things, whether or not on the economic side of things. Very odd response, but that's what my gut is telling me. Wait, you don't think they are sourcing enough resources into the economy or I don't think they're adjusting the economy to fit with players' play patterns as the game matures. A day 90 player will have different economic goals than like a day 20 or day one player. And if you don't account for that in real time, one-to-one with how player cohorts in their journey within the game

play, you will lose players. I think the key crux of retention for our graders is it's economic maintenance. They have more elder players in the game. What do you think they're not serving for these elder players? Like they have the end game loop, the quest you go on, the expedition. Expeditions. The expeditions which give you long run meta progression. To their credit, right? Yeah. Something extraction shooters I think have struggled with. They finally have meta progression. It It seems like it's not holding up, though. Is it because they're not giving enough resources for players to like do the expeditions? This is one of the like I think the biggest challenges in extraction shooters. And we'll see how it handles for Marathon, but you know, Arc Raiders chose not to wipe. And there's a lot of pros to that.
Yeah, exactly. It's optional. Not No no mandatory wipes. There are definitely pros to that. One, it's like a little bit more casual friendly, so you can kind of gather that audience. There is like a communal experience to wipes like in Tarkov that is very engaging and creates like a very fun

moment. Essentially, every let's say 6 months, every time they wipe, it's like a whole new marketing beat, a whole new almost launch of their game, which is very beneficial, but also for casual players, that sounds like insane. Like you're telling me I put in 500 hours of work and it's being erased. Like that does sound insane when you think about it. And so, Marathon chose the route of doing the mandatory wipes, while Arc Raiders chose not to. I personally think Arc Raiders non-mandatory wipes, the like self-imposed wipes, is the better route to go just for a broader audience. But as Anya is talking about the economic impacts, this is what you run into. It's like a day 90 player has these different experiences because that day 90 player, their inventory is only, you know, only removed if they choose so. Also, like Tarkov is forced, and so the economy gets reset every few months, which is it hits a different player like a player persona, I think. I personally really enjoy it. It is very It was much more rogue-like and it it does create this like communal moment at the start of life, which is very fun. But Arc Raiders shows not two and I think that there's long-term life

service impacts for it. I still think it was the correct decision for them. I mean, I think looking at their numbers, there's no reason to argue against that, but these are the consequences that they will face that Argos is bringing up. What do you suggest about a gotcha mechanic implemented? Anytime I hear gotcha, I'm like, yes. Put gotcha in everything. It solves all of our problems. Solves all problems. I love gotcha. Something that I about the life service of Arc Raiders. So, the guys are patching up the game like every week. Like you can see that. They even have the patch notes on their website. There's so there's a lot happening, but at the same time from the outside perspective like anecdotally or from the media or even how the players perceive it, it seems like there's not so much happening at the same time. So, I feel that's one of the challenges that the life service of Arc Raiders is facing. Like it's a common concern of people like jumping into the game, enjoying the social aspects of it, but not feeling that there's much going on.

And this update being something that like the players waited for for a long time, but it not generating that spike in re-engagement is what [clears throat] I find really interesting. I feel like for example, Helldivers was among the best when it comes to re-engaging players that dropped out. And I felt Arc Raiders needed that sort of season or that sort of drop that re-engages a lot of the players, right? Because a lot of players jumped into Arc Raiders that usually wouldn't necessarily jump into extraction shooter. They got attracted by it because of the the social elements that they've they've seen when they're watching streamers or what they've heard about the whole concept of PVP is optional in the game. And this is why also you see a lot of console players playing Arc Raiders, which not usually the common norm in extraction shooters. My guess is a lot of these players have lapsed out and they need reasons to bring them back in. And this update wasn't that. I think our creators need to find ways to have these strong media beats or reasons to bring

the players back in. The new map is interesting, but maybe not different enough visually to do that as a strong re-engagement beat. And then there's the second thing I think they changed the durability percentages for a lot of things with this update. And I feel like sometimes when you have a big re-engagement beat, it can be a bit risky to do such gameplay changes that could upset some players at the same time. So, I I feel maybe what our creators need is more re-engagement beats that are safer, that brings a lot of users back into the game. And I'm not sure if you can necessarily fix the retention problem for the players that have lapsed out via end game systems cuz my current theory and it could be wrong is a lot of these users that lapsed out is not because they got to a lot of high-level content and they dropped out. It might be players that don't usually play extraction shooters that got into our creators because of

the premise of it. And then they run out of things to do or the social part has ran its course for them is my current theory on this. Can I tell you a story that maybe you guys can poke holes in? So, I was initially skeptical of extraction shooters, right? I'm like, "Oh man, Bungie's the only one who should take a shot at this just because there were so many dead bodies and there were so few people that seemed to advance the thesis of the genre. I think Marathon like blew me away in terms of like speeding up the loop, which I think was a big way to make the genre in some ways more accessible again. If it had come out before Arc Raiders, it would have been the accessible Tarkov is something Chris Chris Sides you've said on this podcast multiple times and has really paused me to think whenever someone talks about how hardcore it is is like man that relativity aspect is so important here which is why I go back to the system design piece. Arc Raiders hit mainstream success because the game is unbelievably immersive. When I play this game guys, I don't know how you feel about it, it warps me into this world that is it's incredible. It's incredible. It's

incredible to be in this world with these sci-fi machines that I'm walking through. Sometimes when I meet people we actually don't shoot each other that's very common which like encourages the sense of camaraderie. There's a lot of the storytelling that sometimes we talk about in extraction shooters that I think Arc Raiders does really well. I feel like I'm on this like grand adventure and they also do really great storytelling when you're out of round with the vendors. You go through quest dialogues with them which I think makes sense and are not distracting in the way they usually are in extraction shooters. They added small elements of meta progression like the expeditions we were just talking about but also the workbenches, right? Where you have a certain level of crafting that you can basically put yourself on a ledge from where you are in terms of progression. But ultimately this is still the first mainstream success and exactly to Ferossa's point DEU is declining and the game does not have the long run accessibility triggers I would argue that gamers are accustomed to. Losing stuff even the option of it like these big resets even between rounds I think

are still a significant friction. Even if you're like you're going to give me the recycling of earning new resources there's still a UX barrier to constantly having to upgrade and like put things into my backpack that I think really sucks. And so what I would argue is just like Battle Royale this genre still needs three or four more accessibility pushes to give me more respawns like we had in Battle Royale, to give me the gulag, to give me the casket that you have in Apex Legends. Like I don't think this is the final form of this genre by far and Arc Raiders is big enough success where it will show that more people are going to throw money at this, but I still think you got to go way harder in accessibility. I still think this is not ready for the mainstream in many ways to sustain over a year. Cuz I'm shorn from these games, by the way. So, you're speaking on the genre or on Dark Raiders specifically? I think Dark Raiders shows that this was not enough to build a regular top 15 Steam hit. I

think it is going to continue to decline. And the only thing that will save it or new entrance into the genre is pushing accessibility more. I don't think you go more hardcore. I think the Tarkov creator, I mean, he'll have success, but it will be a niche success cuz he doesn't need it. But anyone else who wants to to win mainstream, I think is going to is going to need to go more accessible. This could be a good segue, you'd tell me. I think what Apex Legends has done recently that Dark Raiders could do that would work for its game is improve the health of the core sandbox experience within each map. That could mean different types of AI, that could mean different types or specific RNGs for specific loot within each map that changes week by week or season by season that's to give players a reason to play the game to see what's changed. I think any game that has a sandbox or a sandbox-like features, they should really lean on that.

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check out Vybz. It's built different. It's designed for growth. And it's powered by good vibes. So, head over to v y b s dot c o and get yourself some good vibes. So, what what has happened in Apex Legends? They just launched their new season. It has been like a rocky road in terms of DAU. They're at near all-time highs around 2.18 million, which is pretty impressive. Gentlemen, what's what's going on in Apex Legends? I don't know how much by the way you guys have Have you looked into this? I've actually been going back and playing it. I've got a couple thoughts, maybe more meta than just the specific update, but you know, Apex is just very impressive. The live service that it's ran, like the story of Apex is just a really interesting story. I hope that like Jason Schreier writes a book about it one day or something. I think something that they do very well, and I think something that is also holding them back a bit that like Fortnite gets away with, is they do a really good job I feel of bouncing back and forth between the

casual and the hardcore. Like they are very good at casualizing an update and then turning some of those more casual players into hardcore ranked players and then forcing there and then pulling back again to casual. So, they kind of have this like breathing nature of their live service between the casual audience and the hardcore audience, which I think they do very well. This update does feel a little bit more casual serving, which could be a reflection of why it's having, you know, more DAU. I'm not a not 100% sure, but I do think they do a very good job. Whenever you think about live service, I always think about there's like pushing and pulling of the audience as you go through and you have to find what yours is. And I think Apex is really is this casual to hardcore back and forth they do. This feels pretty well. It's like a year ago you talk about Apex and people are worried like what happened, oh no, and now we're here a year later talking about good. Like it's just really interesting story. Very impressive. I think something that Fortnite gets away with that Apex if they had this option, they would dominate, is they don't have a way to turn off their skill gap.

What I mean by that is like in Fortnite you have build and no build. Build is really the skill gap in Fortnite, and if you want to play casually, you can play no build and not worry about, you know, people building crazy buildings around you while you're trying to play. Apex kind of struggles in this area because their skill gap is baked into their gameplay. I mean, the movement, the abilities, these are all hardcore part of their gameplay, which I think is really a challenge for them when they try to lean more casual. Cuz even when I play it and you know, hear about more casual things, I'm just kind of over my sweat era of FPS playing. You know, I've kind of gone through that. I'm more of the you know, I guess you can call me a dad a dad shooter even though I I don't have any children. But I feel like I'm in that era of my life. And so the fact that their skill gap is baked deeply into their gameplay and core loop is a bit of a challenge. But they've done just so well, I feel at moving back and forth with the different audiences that they serve. And this update is just is just impressive. Like I guess I'm just trying to say like damn, I'm just impressed by Apex. Like they're such a good team to look at and learn from, I

think. The thing that I have realized coming back to the game is that they really build on their successes. Like we always look up to the Infinity Ward team that brought us Call of Duty Modern Warfare because the true innovation in first-person shooters that I think people underestimate has actually been movement. Movement has been so key. You go back and you play these earlier first-person shooter games. And the first thing you'll see is like, "Oh my god, they're so slow." Right? The sprint button was so innovative and Titanfall 2, of course, was the pinnacle of this, which is why it holds this like very strange place in our heart, which is, of course, what Apex Legends is based on. It does It's a slimmed-down version of the Titanfall 2 movement system where if you slide down something that has downward momentum, you will pick up uh your own speed, right? But the thing that they've done is they've actually built on top of this in you know, recent years where if you move up an object and you're you're going up, you have a mini-time event where if you press spacebar jump, you will actually accelerate forward. When

you vault something, then you have the option to like pick up momentum, which I think was like really clever. I don't know if you guys have been following the like in-round progression that they've been doing in the game, but one of the ways they've developed that is that you have these special centers that you collect resources from in-round resources. And once you've hit these certain thresholds, then your armor increases in rarity value, which is different than finding the armor suits in the boxes. They've gone more in the rogue-like direction, which I think has been great. And there's the one last thing I'll throw in there. I don't know if you guys have been following their monetization. This is a game that always has monetized extremely well. I can tell you I worked at EA, and I could have seen the numbers. This game monetizes extremely extremely well. Don't forget they have loot boxes. Don't forget they pioneered an event loot boxes. They use the Eastern design philosophy where you increase the price per box, and then essentially you have sampling without replacement where you're trying to earn items from a pool as you open the boxes. So, you're guaranteed to get, let's say, 24 items.

They just randomize the order in which you get it, which is something that I think is more aligned to Western expectations. And then remember when you get all of the event items, you get a special reward, which is their heirloom items, which we saw a little bit earlier in this video. That was a huge innovation they had. It was literally just what you see in CS:GO, which is the cosmetics that you have with the knife. It is an individualized melee item that has its own custom animations that players went nuts for. Remember, this was at launch. After you bought 500 boxes, they would give you one of these. They've introduced heirloom shards where you're like slowly progressing towards these exclusive melee items that players love. So, like, the victory of this game is core gameplay. The victory of this game has been, I would argue, its monetization. The thing that it hasn't worked from it that I'm curious to hear you guys have uh opinion about is that its new modes seem to have not worked. Like, remember, it tried to introduce a CS:GO mode. It played with team deathmatch. It's played, I think, with capture the flag.

It looks like they can't make this game a platform. And if you remember, EA bought four additional support studios for Apex Legends in Madison, Wisconsin a couple years ago. And it feels like they haven't been able to scale the game maybe in the way they expected. When it comes to scaling the game, I think it's worth experimenting on what sticks or not just as LTMs or LTEs tied to events can't hurt. That being said, the bread and butter is the BR mode for every Apex Legends and all the systems are built towards that. And when it comes to some reasons why I think the game overall is popping off this far, there's two big pillars. One of them is the game itself. The game is being improved upon with meaningful updates with via more viable legends, healthier meta diversity, which you touch upon, which I call emergent meta game updates and progression, which always do well when executed well. So, constant quality of life updates, of

course, listening to the community and having cheap wins along the way. That being said, the other part of the conversation that I think should be mentioned is the studios have no control over and that's of the market. There is such a thing as BR fatigue out there. And people are tired of fill in the blank Battle Royale, this Battle Royale, Apex has only come out stronger in comparison to the other games on the market. And something else that's also I think a market condition and of course the team did a great job in capitalizing and optimizing for would be the overseas market. More than 25% of players playing Apex Legends on PC are in China. And from a product perspective, the aesthetics of Apex Legends hits and resonates very strongly not just in the West, but also in the East. Very few games are able to scratch all those itches. The games that come to mind are games like League of Legends and let's

say Blizzard games overall, but in the landscape of Battle Royale's, visually speaking, yes. Apex Legends stand out. On top of that, and this is purely speculation on my part as well, with Marvel Rivals having such a strong start a few years ago and still doing pretty well, and Overwatch also doing probably better than ever on Steam at least, you have potentially whole new players exposed to hero shooters that want more hero shooters, and maybe they've heard of Battle Royale. Oh, a Battle Royale with hero shooting elements, I'm going to play that. Again, this is just speculation, but these are my thought processes of what other things going so well for Apex Legends so far that I have observed. I really like your theory. Hypothesis, I don't have any proof, so. Yeah, [laughter] cuz I I think what you said, like the the premise of Apex, especially when it came out, was it back in 2019? I think everyone was trying to do a BR and add

like one spin to it, which is like, okay, it's PUBG came out, and then Fortnite was like, well, we're PUBG, but with building and a more different like stylized art style. Apex came out, and we were like, okay, we're a BR, but we have legends, and there's the hero shooter aspect of it. But I really think like the hidden USP of this game is the locomotion and the traversal. Like when you jump into this game, it is just so pleasant to move around and traverse things that you come in for the hero experience, but you stay for the locomotion. What I really like about Apex is even though it had so many challenges sometimes that players dropped, then increased, then dropped again. For me, it always struck me as a game that is being developed by devs that play it almost on a daily basis, and I know that should sound like it's what every game is like, but that's not what every game is. I feel like the way they changed their questing systems, the way they changed

their monetization systems, the way they evolve all the features gradually. Like you can see with the different like videos that we have on the screen. Like a lot of these systems when they first started, they were very very very simple. It's It takes so much from the mobile handbook without being on on mobile. And I really love that a lot about Apex. Staying true for what they are combined with the adaptation and the evolution of their engagement systems taking a lot of lessons from the mobile space is I think what was a key success for them. And I think something that that's been interesting about this update as well is that they're looking at putting bots more in kind of low-skilled lobbies. So as we like talked about kind of more casualizing it. This game it's a core game. Like Apex is hard. It's a very difficult shooter to play. And so they they adding in the bots into their matchmaking for like especially solo experiences. They're also doing some interesting thing where they're trying to match like when you solo

queue, they will try to match you with some lower skilled teams. And so like you're their image that if it's a team, their MMR will be lower than yours as a solo queue or just trying to balance out some of these things. So I think they're doing a really good job of like focusing more on the kind of average player's experience when they queue for a match and compared to being steamrolled. And I think they're adding the bots is pretty interesting. I want to see It'll be nice to see how that does. Because I always think like I know One of the things I think they May Titanfall so great to play and feel so well is like half your kills were bot kills. But it just felt good to kill the bots. Like you didn't have that like oh these are bots I don't like I want to play players. Uh like it felt so good in Titanfall and now that I think they're starting to kind of add some similar elements to Apex. They've continued to make the game softer. Like so to give you an example, remember you had respawns in Apex Legends that was one of the original innovations. When your teammates died, they solved the major problem of you having all this downtime while you waited for them to complete the round by

the teammate being able to go to where your your casket essentially was and then pick up the banner and then go to respawn point. They later uh casualize that by giving you these equipments that you could have so you could call down a mobile respawn center. Now they've made it even easier where you can craft your player's banner so you don't even need to go to their casket if the casket is beyond for instance the ring that closes the field of play. And remember if you went out there you get damaged. So they've like continually figured out how they can make it easier for other players to get back into the game. And so you can just basically keep rejoining and so that's made it far more engaging to know that I have a chance of coming back which again is like a total betrayal of like the original the original like hardcore Battle Royale only one life stakes. Like it continues to get softer and softer and softer. It just feels like that's the arc of history. Gulag was like the same way in Call of Duty. That was like another revive checkpoint essentially. And again I think this has to influence

how you think about extraction shooters. Okay, there's apparently a rumor that Disney is getting a secret extraction shooter later this year. Chris, anything you want to do on your victory lap? We can make We can make this quick. You know, I I like to kind of uh be my own devil's advocate sometimes. Something that does worry me a bit about having a Disney extraction shooter is to me it almost feels like we're jumping the shark too early. Like I don't know if we're there yet to be like needing to add Disney characters to like grab players for extraction shooters, but this could be awesome. Like I'm stoked. I'm the Anytime there's an extraction shooter, I'm down to play it. That's like my one kind of like just odd uh hesitation is this kind of jumping the shark too early? What does this do to the genre? But yeah, look. I mean extraction shooters are the future. I'll just continue to say it. I I want to hear a lot of fighting back. But I think most of my the last five years of my career was arguing with people until our graders came out. And so yeah, it feels good. I think it all depends on how it would

be marketed, this rumored Disney extraction shooter. Whether or not it'll be even called an extraction shooter or some extraction adventure like our graders has been described as in the past. And that being said, if it does come out, if it does materialize and it's free-to-play, there is 0.0 chance it can't not grow the extraction shooter base significantly. What's also interesting is this rumor is coming out. I think it came out like three weeks ago, but yesterday was it? Epic and Disney just launched the I think it's their biggest tool set. Star Wars, right? Exactly. It's called Unreal for Fortnite, I think. So basically, you can create a lot of Star Wars content using the presets. Added there's templates, templates for game modes, all based on Star Wars. And they have different sort of payout for these maps. So you have like to pay 20% for the Walt Disney company if you

create those maps and based on your engagement payout, etc. So I'm wondering if the rumor is connected to this. So someone who's got the rumor out, it's because they saw some insider content of the Epic Worlds and Star Wars thing that's been going or it's actually going to be an extraction shooter. It's going to be really interesting to see how they're going to mish the different characters cuz I feel like it's a bit different if it's a Star Wars extraction shooter versus a Disney extraction shooter. I can't see how you can make that work outside of something that feels like Fortnite. So the concept of a shooter using any of the different Disney IPs sounds appealing to me. The concept that's using all of them, I feel like that's already kind of what you could do in Fortnite. So I'm not sure. I guess that's a really good point and for some you know, I kind of missed this when I was thinking about it is when I think of Disney, this just baby my age is I think of like Mickey Mouse. But at this point Disney owns so many IPs, that you're right. Like maybe it is Star Wars focused, and so my my assessment of like

jumping the shark maybe isn't really valid cuz I'm thinking of like Mickey Mouse and like Goofy and [ __ ] But I kind of forget that Disney pretty much owns everything nowadays. They have so much that I don't know how the IPs would fit together in an extraction universe, but maybe using any of those IPs by themselves would be enough. So I I would be interested in seeing that a bit more. Okay. I need to go grill stuff. Always a pleasure. Yep, see you.
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