Still Crushing It: Why Minecraft Refuses to Die

[Music] Cool. All right. Gonna do Minecraft again. They have passed 550 million globally. Crest, I wanted to know if you've chicken jockeyed yet. I missed you last week when we talked about this and so please would love your thoughts. I don't know. Look, Minecraft is an amazing franchise. I mean, it is like ubiquitous. Like, everyone knows Minecraft or has played Minecraft. And I think the demographic is far more broad than Roblox even for Minecraft. [ __ ] my daughter still watches those stupid goddamn people playing that game constantly. It's like unbelievable. My brilliant daughter listening to that [ __ ] nonsense. Anyway, so it makes sense that it's doing well at the box office. I think again it supports the overall zeitgeist of the franchise and to that extent that that does, but there was no coinciding launch of jack [ __ ] for this thing, you know? I mean, there wasn't like some kind of like halo effect on something new that they're releasing with the movie. It's just the

overall franchise has become more popular because of the movie and so good for them, you know? But I don't know. It's not this like windfall. I can't believe I disagree with you. I actually think this is I I I can't even believe I disagree with you. So, right now we're looking at like mobile revenue from the mobile skew, which is a premium title, which is just irrelevant. Yeah, it's up, but it won't do it won't do jack in terms of like marginal level. Maybe maybe we're going to squeak 5 million out of the mobile premium skew, but that's not really where the revenue center is. And so I actually go back to what you mentioned, Jen, like it's franchise management, right? And so what is effective franchise management? Well, to monetize these events, to basically free ride on a movie for all these other vectors, they need to exist, right? And so Minecraft isn't just the game anymore. Like looking at this IP skew, like they have a significant merch component. Like they're in stores, right? like they actually have a pretty good surface area to monetize the movie and free ride on all this [ __ ] And that is what I think a lot of these other trans media franchises have not had. Like they haven't been able to free ride effectively. There hasn't been good

franchise management because you can never time things. I'm sorry. Like that's a [ __ ] strategy. You're not going to be able to time all the [ __ ] together. They did run an event in the game by the way in the mobile skew. They did have a 14-day event, but it's irrelevant compared to having like merch at Target for $20. I'd much rather take that. All right, let me clarify my point of view here. When Riot does their amazing events for the game, that actually accelerates sales within game of digital assets and digital content and battle passes and special event stuff that makes sense in terms of building actually a business around these type of big events, right? Minecraft isn't doing that, nor do they don't even really monetize all that well. That's the problem with Minecraft is they've never really focused on the monetization front. So yes, sure they're going to sell more chachkis hats and like figurines and [ __ ] like that, but it's just not the same as supporting the game content stuff in my opinion. When I was at Mattel, I made Minecraft toys and we made a lot of money on

Minecraft toys. So you Yes. from a franchise plan which is what I wrote many times when I was at Disney and and then was a beneficiary of when I was a lency is like these are the moments that propel the brand forward and not only appeases the fans you know like I told you guys I'm a step monster you know Zach is 19 and he has been playing Minecraft since it came out when he was like five six or seven I can't even remember it's been on his iPad the entire time and so he's one of the ones chicken jockeying in the movie theater while the next 5-year-old is going to the movie and is now becoming a fan for life because of what that 5-year-old is now experiencing. So, what these things do is really extends the franchise. And yes, in an ideal world, you would want to link up and launch everything at the same time. And I think, you know, the one that is kind of doing it is Last of Us 2. Did anyone watch the premiere? I I was so happy. So good. Yeah. So, so good. Now, they did report it was only up 10%, but this is prestige like

HBO, you know, Prestige TV. They did launch Last of Us 2 Remastered. I haven't checked on how that one is doing. But for me, these are longer term plays. They're not performance marketing. See, I I hate that so much though. I hate it so much because it's it's the Simon Pullman, who's also on LinkedIn. Like, it's this bank account model of brand equity, right? like where every entry in the franchise either adds or removes from the brand equity, you know, almost like a bank account. And so, okay, we're making all these deposits by like launching these franchises, they're going to have long-term uplift. And I think that's [ __ ] I think the effective way to do franchise management is to liqufy the moment. Like, you need to cash in now. You need to cash in while the hype is the predicting yourself. Did you just disagree with me? The reason the reason Minecraft works is because they already have merchant channels. Oh, I see. I see. They have everything ready to go. they can liqufy the moment and capture those gains. And I think like all these effects are going to fade. I just don't think they're they're never as strong as you think they are.

Like the bank account model that capital depreciates really quickly. Dude, if you're doing this right, which is look at the Barbie movie, it's everyone else. Maybe the game didn't do something special and huge and big, but it's Voltron or it's Gustall. Like the sum is greater than the whole of the parts. And what happens when you have these big moments? Everyone for the last 18 months has been making toys and games and t-shirts and bedding for this moment. I guarantee you that the Minecraft franchise just is like cashing in just like the Mario franchise did two years ago. And I looked at a lot of the numbers because I had the toy numbers from the toy world is like that thing spiked up as did all the other lines of business. So, I think the challenge for us is we're the gamers, right? We're like, "What did games do?" But if you're the franchise owner, you're like, "Holy [ __ ] I just like this is the best thing ever." And what was funny was that I was going to concede on this one to Philip. I'm like, "Okay, you're probably right. Like, Minecraft actually is probably

achieving some objectives here in terms of the Halo effect of this movie, right? Because they have all this merch and other [ __ ] that's going on within that franchise." But I agree with also Philip in the sense that like like this is not the beall end all, right? Like Marvel did it the best when the Age of Ultron and all that [ __ ] [ __ ] that was going on. All the movies that beats every time they add a [ __ ] movie, they were doing all kinds of licensing and and and game game stuff. All that stuff was like increasing their TAM and and their revenue across all different channels all simultaneously like because of cadence. It's just like a C classic live ops thing. You know, the cadence of content just kept coming and the beats kept going, right? But if you have one Barbie movie like four years ago and then another Barbie movie [ __ ] five years from now, dude, that's not the same. That is not the same, you know? Like it gets a zeitgeist for like [ __ ] 10 minutes, you know? That's it, right? That's great. Yes. Barb TV is far more effective, right? You can only do a ro an Angry Birds movie like every 3, four years. TV you can do seasonally, right? Like you have beats

so that are so much more common. You know that you were on The Walking Dead, right? WWE, all these things are easier to live ops. So, I'm going to do a yes. And so, if you truly do a franchise plan correctly, these are called temple moments. And then you build your content around the moments outside of the big massive tempo. So, so you're right. In a perfect world, Barbie should have followed up with there's a TV show and there's this and there and how do you go after the different segments? What's happening right now is I don't think that people are doing franchise management in the best possible way to make sure that they extend the life of these big temple moments. So I'm yes sanding you if that makes sense. [Music]