Steel Media's Chris James and Dave Bradley On A New Era Of Mobile, Blockchain, and AI At GDC 2023

[Music] thank you good afternoon World welcome back to the pg.biz podcast it's post GDC 2023 and we thought we would catch up with some of the team members from steel media who were out in San Francisco to find out what the buzz was on the show floor so we are welcoming back Mr Chris James and Mr Dave Bradley welcome home gentlemen how was GDC Peggy is also there at first actually the hardest working women in Showbiz yeah indeed indeed I thought GDC I mean GDC was back I mean we're just back from GDC we'll be back over a week now actually but but GDC was definitely back I mean we've obviously had our biggest show ever in London in January but this is I don't know if it's the biggest GDC ever but it was certainly up there it's about I think they're talking about 28 000 registered attendees plus the thousands all that don't buy tickets and

hang around the hotels which is where I spent a lot of my time at these shows but um but yeah and it was back it felt Buzzy it felt the place to be it felt like you needed another week to get around it all and um but yeah I I I enjoy the show yeah Chris Chris is right I think we're looking at numbers like 28 000 I think they're saying and compared to last year which was just after the pandemic and and people were hesitant about going back to Live Events I think we're potentially hearing that it was twice the size it was in 2022 which is which is very gratifying I think this year as well there were more International visitors there for instance there was a um a whole Summit by light speed Studios now Lightspeed are part of tencent and although they have offices all over world including in America they they flew a lot of their team in from from China as well which I don't think we saw in 2022 so so GDC is again the kind of place to get that sort of content as well fantastic and Peggy you were you were there you were across the show floor yes I was in fact I was doing a lot of interviews for Pocket Gamer gonna be a lot of Q and A's a lot of features with um with just people in the industry

Studios we haven't heard from for a while a lot of unsung heroes at GDC but making a very strong show um and I'll have more of that but another thing that made a very strong show at GDC and I just want to hear Dave and Chris what you think is also mobile uh what were your impressions as well it should be about mobile Mobile's over 50 in the industry I know I think there's a little bit of catch up there ironically you know the whole industry is going through a little bit of flux at the moment and mobile certainly no less than anything else with uh you know the idfa changes and some the knock-on effects of All That official definitely and I saw some really interesting things happening with mobile I thought I had a play on it on the mythriel stand who are um finding a way to broadcast mobile onto TV so you know you could play in mobile phone games directly on the TV and there are a number of really good mobile Studios were present like I mentioned Lightspeed um from uh which is a 10 cent Studio but they're the people who co-developed um pubg mobile for instance which is a phenomenon and uh and they were there

um epic of course had a one of the biggest stands in the Expo area of course most famous for fortnite and at the show they only unveiled there um for their unreal editor for for fortnite creators which is great but of course that has a mobile implementation as well that fortnight's big on mobile so there's plenty of stuff on the Epic stand for for mobile fans there but to Chris's point I'm with you Peggy I think I saw a lot of mobile projects but generally there was a kind of a Vibe around the show that the model the free to play mobile model that we've been so familiar with for years is maybe uh waning a little bit and the cost of user acquisition particularly in this era of restricted data uh is proving quite hard and so one place where I didn't see quite so much mobile was the Indie Studios where I think maybe they've been a little bit sort of chased out of that scene a little bit um for instance on the um the mix the the Indie showcase loads of really good Indie projects there but probably out of two floors of uh Indie Games maybe only two mobile games there and I can see that happening

so a lot of the talk at the show I think for me and I don't know whether you know Chris and Peggy this was your impression as well was that the old kind of free to play game that where you then you know monetized through it you know ads or in-app purchase or whatever was struggling this year and the people are you know experimenting elsewhere so maybe things like the subscription model with the Apple arcade and Netflix is going to have more of a um you know be more in people's minds this year it absolutely it was a lot about subscriptions and it was also a lot about um I don't know what actually you would call it just trying to think about merchandising right so it's a lot about Collectibles we won't use nft words it was just it was just like ownership of assets and what can we do to extract more money out of that as part of the game experience what are we going to do because the monetization models are different let's say they're broken but they've moved on I think this is reflected in a lot of their content that you're seeing on the pocketgamer.biz site which is hybrid monetization you

know there's no one-size-fits-all anymore and more and more of the the companies out there that are working within the mobile space helping and supporting developers it's all about using that data it's all about you know tracking and measuring the various business models that you're now expected to use and I think that that is having an impact on the the smaller Studios that in the end of the market because it's it's a specialized topic and if you don't have somebody in-house who you know kind of has that background that knowledge base you're not necessarily going to be able to compete effectively yeah I mean I think that the point you make about the subscriptions is definitely valid I spoke to a lot of people kind of one-to-one sort of CEOs like guys from half brick CPU from mobile Corps or come to us or people I I I and that they're all looking at at different models and I don't think anyone's going oh free to play is dead or it's not gonna still be a massive driver of Revenue but I think when it comes to starting new projects and looking ahead I think there's more interest excitement and opportunity in new models like whether it's a

subscription or cross-platform or or maybe it is a web 3 uh game as we do see subscription growth that actually that is good news for the Indie Community again because it means that game quality not monetization quality becomes again the most prominent thing absolutely and I don't mean to kind of swerve away from the subject but but just as a segue from what you were saying there and Peggy you raised it as well about the the ownership people people are avoiding using the term at nft so I saw a couple of couple of Studios still about that but it was interesting that one of the other kind of things if I if I may from GDC it seemed uh it was that the the web 3 the kind of blockchain game Space seems to have sort of breathed out a little bit and and some of the as the kind of attention has gone away from it and as people have um maybe some of the speculators have moved on after some of last year's you know some of last year's kind of failures in the space like the FDX exchange things with some of the pushback from the industry and some some of the kind of chances to put it kind of

moved away from that actually what we've been left with at GDC was people working on blockchain games who actually know about Games first so I saw people who were developing mobile games and PC games who were from a games background and then finding ways to monetize it with blockchain rather than I think like a year ago at kind of um GDC 2022 I was sort of seeing a lot of people who came from maybe like a decentralized finance background kind of trying to figure out a way to to enter games through blockchain but didn't really know what made a good game and and so that was kind of heartening this year I think it's a really good point Dave and I think the fact that we are very clearly over the initial hump on the the hype curve and you're absolutely right you know once it becomes a sort of fundamental piece of the plumbing as it were in much the same way as free to play dead then we'll see a lot of companies getting on innovating and producing things that potentially have some real value to players it was really you know the game first and spoke with companies for example uh Magic Eden right and the whole idea is we're going

to build a home for web 3 games it's like you know a portal in a way that the game developers can be a part of and the merchandise can be there and was the whole idea that this is a reset in many ways to your point Dave as well because it was interesting how many companies want to step up now and sort of assist with that ecosystem building this new ecosystem talking about homes for web 3 games talking about what the ecosystem needs talking about ways to bring these games together and I guess we're going to see something really interesting which is almost like Game of Thrones For Me Maybe game of phones I don't know where everyone's like come over to my home for web free games and come over to my home where we're going to have all the subscription games and it's gonna be interesting you're right there's an absolute um excitement about space and um that's why we've got blockchain gamer that was really reanimated itself with

uh with the new editorial team coming in so we hope to be part of the ecosystem we hope to play a role both with Pocket Gamer and with blockchain and we'll be on games we hope to play a role in that in that space um and trying to educate and entertain and inform people he mentioned about Beyond games and uh just just a hat tip really um Dave excellent article with guy gadney whom we interviewed remember Brian which was just I think amongst the top interviews not even just on this podcast but overall on the industry just really really solid and sort of telling us about the future of Storytelling and AI which was of course another huge Hot Topic at me as well yeah thank you I'm glad you saw that that interview I had a good chance to chat with Ai and I of course he was on he was on the the podcast he's spoken to him you know that he's very articulate on the subject of artificial intelligence what I like about what um charisma.ai his company are doing is that they're very much looking at AI as a way to enable storytellers rather than replace them

which I think is what people are worried about in the in the creative Industries the AI is going to replace them and and uh and this you know we are in a time of change and and some of those fears I think may may be well founded but but um but certainly charisma.ai are not and they they use um conversational Ai and large language models to enable a new type of Storytelling and I I think that what we're seeing with with the way that AI is built into non-player characters and games is probably the death of the the traditional dialogue tree you know where you used to have like four options where you speak to a character in a game and you've got to pick one thing and and now it's uh it looks very much like you can you know you'll be able to interact very much more naturalistically with characters but there are there are other companies there working on the AI side of things as well it was a it was an another Hot Topic as we found you know in January our our own event um a lot lots of people talking about artificial intelligence as a way to enhance their their storytelling that to the game um and of course yeah the other thing big thing forgive me was you couldn't

fail to notice was the VR was was huge and again vr's another topic that we follow on Beyond games and that we have done at previous uh previous events that we've run and here at GDC again you know I think VR was having a bit of a moment too I played a number of interesting things Atari were there with um a game that they're publishing resolution our good friends Mr Tommy palm and Co um had they had quite a big big sort of open Booth with four or five games on display there was a lot of VR yeah which is interesting again it's something we you know we're back in 2016 maybe seven weeks ago VR connects and we were kind of that was again one of these technologies that had that acceleration and full story and I remember I remember that GDC back then had you know everybody had it was a it was a VR developer and then obviously the adoption has taken time I think we're on a we're on a path towards that now um you know there's a lot of of quests out there there's now these Pico devices um we have PlayStation uh VR and and

then obviously the fruit the fruit sellers our favorite fruit sellers are gonna be unleashing their version uh rumoredly a pretty it's pretty much the worst kept secret at the moment that at WWDC in June we're going to be getting Hands-On with the the the Apple AR VR device whatever it is that might cost three thousand dollars and might change your life forever so I think Dave's absolutely right the kind of VR the VR um stroke AR kind of uh technology is is having its having its day and quietly quietly developing for me that's the interesting thing because as as the one person who wasn't out in San Francisco I I wouldn't have suspected VR would maybe be having this Renaissance because we're not at this stage yet but we've got kind of mass market adoption you know we're still at the point where regardless of how many meta headsets how many psvr headsets are there are out there it's still not kind of a mainstream audience um you know has it become like the new the new Cutting Edge console so it there

are sufficient numbers of Gamers out there who are willing to pay for Content that it's now building a viable Market yeah I I honestly thought we would be waiting for AR and for you know the the magic leaps and the the microsofts and and of course the apples to hit the market before we really saw any kind of major movements or leaps forward magic leaps forward very good um I'm just looking actually how many VR headsets I'm doing a cheeky while we're live I think one of the interesting things of course I think the price of the matter Quest 2 was slashed wasn't it I think so I think that helped put it in a number of people's hands yeah and then and then to be honest someone else says 15 and a half is a different report so yeah I think that that sort of 15 and a half six and a half million I mean it's still small compared to I mean how many you know consoles and PCs and obviously mobiles are out there is in the billions but but yeah it's growing so it's great to hear that it's actually making an impact and we've had this Resurgence and within the games World perfect segue

talking about impact that's it exactly so we've counted them down we talked about web three we also talked about subscriptions so monetization models hybrid a i v r a r these are the Hot Topics that defined what we saw at GDC now we have Seattle right around the corner and we have you here Dave and Chris what are we going to see in Seattle that's interesting so we're looking forward to pgcc in a couple of months time yeah I mean we're I one of the things I did right after GDC since I was there on the west coast was I flew up to Seattle for a week and spent some time visiting Studios up there and uh meeting up with our friends at Seattle Indians and uh and um some of the bigger Studios and that was very that was very interesting and Illuminating and I think that as well as doing what we always do at our Pocket Gamer connects events bringing you know knowledge sharing and networking opportunities to one place the thing that the industry needs at the the moment I think are

um uh basically recruitment is a big thing so a lot of people are looking for work at the moment and that's the nature of the industry I mean that's always the case we do a careers activity at all our events but particularly I think at the moment there's a need for that so we're going to have a recruitment Fair on day two of our event that's going to be the 17th of May and then we're um also supporting the Indies and again we always support the in this um but there's a lot of Indie studios in Seattle particularly it's very strong for that um and this is an interesting time for any general so we're going to have a an indie Expo area at PGC Seattle which is twice the size of last year wow we're doubling the size of the the tables in in the uh we will have a big web 3 contingent as well but Seattle has a has a lot of web 3 uh studios in and around that vicinity um you know we'll be covering all the the latest mobile games Trends and and the general Global Trends and opportunities as well Seattle in terms of flavor is is a bit more kind of cross cross industry probably than even London

I mean London by its scale is has has everything in it but Seattle is pulled more focusedly a bit uh across cross-platform we will also be doing our regular investment uh connection activities a lot of people at the moment looking for either Publishers or investors um you know the investment Market still a lot of money out there to be deployed has slowed down a bit but there is a lot of investment out there waiting to find a home and and you know companies looking for their you know startup capital or second round funding and we're going to be helping that with our investor connector stuff as well so a lot of different themes there if you're in the games industry you come to Seattle it's a nice nice place as well it's nice part of the world and then we're going to do more after that we've got a month before we go online that came out of nowhere I came out of nowhere didn't it well I had been talking to we're working with the uh the authorities out there working with the local um so trade uh and and uh tourism board and and yeah that's an event that they look they want to grow their own

version of e3 stroke Games come out there and we're going to try to help the B2B side so we're going out there so that's that's just just starting to announce speakers and and early sponsors for that uh and then in July Toronto but uh but yeah so there's a lot of shows coming up but Seattle is first and foremost they already reached out to me to moderate a couple sessions and I was looking at Dubai I thought you know what guys you know we'll take you around the world this is around the world in in 80 weeks or 80 days it could be it could literally be around about 80 days if we keep up expanding these uh this year there'll be something in our calendar every single month and that might not necessarily be a whole Pocket game of connects but we're also for instance announced we're going to be doing two Fringe events uh in August alongside games Gamescom for instance and so so pretty much every month October has a window at the moment so uh you know Scottish Games Week 2023 is back um so so uh yeah that's just kind of landed so uh yeah we should have a chat the

mobile games oh my God she's in uh yeah which is later this month we'll be announcing the 2023 mobile games awards at bafta in London after 195 Piccadilly in London we're going to be quizzes be on stage suited and booted handing out the gongs for this year's uh mobile mobile games industry prizes so that's that's just around the corner at the time of recording this uh there's still just a few days left for people to vote that was that actually closes very soon industry votes so far which for an industry Awards it's pretty phenomenal I think previously did it with like a hundred 100 kind of anonymous judges and and that was okay but we just thought well why don't we just open this up and and we have this year and yeah people have have engaged so people do care uh so people will hopefully coming along to celebrate that and hopefully to celebrate whether or not I can get into my suit which is going to be worth coming along for because to be fair you know it has it hasn't got bigger and I have so that could be worth watching

yeah Chris will be the host with the most and we've got 23 categories I want to say we're um we're revealing that's true yeah no it's it's um yeah again we fail to get any real presenting talent and so it will be uh will be me living out my frustrated attempts at being a stand-up comedian you see that but idfe is is a growing problem you know so it's only a matter of time before you know Michael McIntyre's doing a whole 15 minutes on it this week oh yeah like if you do send to all well actually that's the UA process it's like basically you click about and if you get your advert sent to everybody in Michael McIntyre's kind of uh contact book that could be the new strategy are you watching this I mentioned him here in the show now who'll be tuning in I know yeah I know it's a free plug for the McIntyre by God it'll almost certainly

not be ours but we'll see it's where we never know it's like he might be free that evening you know he might have a tuxedo exactly I I guess we'll just have to wait and see you know the almighty reach of this podcast has yet to be us or teams so well there we go there's the plug section done I'm pretty comprehensively too and that's why we do this Brian because it is such a blast to co-host this show isn't it it's always a joy always an absolute joy to talk to you and having you guys on has just made it's been icing on the cake well thank you for having us thank you do another one after the next do another one after the next show we'll make it after every major cool show conference we get together we'll talk about it again post PGC yeah looking forward to that's great fantastic yeah PGC next it's a deal so uh Mr Chris James Mr David Bradley thank you so much for joining us and Peggy Peggy Rose a pleasure

always a pleasure Brian thanks so much this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market and all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at pgvis and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz forward slash podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on

YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the puppetgamer.fiz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian baglo I'm Peggy Ann saltz and that's a wrap until next week foreign