🏆 The 2024 Golden TWIG Awards: an Unfiltered Gaming Industry Award Show

hey you and welcome to the golden twig nomination podcast in this episode we will be talking about who we nominate to get the coveted golden twig award and it's a real physical reward for the companies who want to receive it now traditionally not every company wanted to receive I mean you'll you'll understand when you hear the categories but some have and they we've had great award ceremonies anyways this is a nomination show you actually decide who wins this this coveted beautiful trophy so go into the description of this podcast and cast your vote you can cast from one category two categories or all 10 categories and remember it's your vote that matters and most importantly remember this is for Laughs for the LOLs you know we're about fun so enjoy the episode enjoy the podcast and remember to cast your vote hello everyone and welcome to

deconstructor of fun this week in games number 315 where we give our game industry Insider takes on the top gaming news stories of each week but today we're going to do our special golden twig award show well actually it's a bit more of the nomination show where we talk through all of the different nominees that we have for our own version of what was hot and not for 2024 so hi everyone I'm Jen donaho I am the marketing and Publishing person in the RPG that we call Twig so today we have Philip black economy monetization of the sorts ready for Squad Busters pounding oh my God Eric Chris strategy and investing M katov Founders founding VC all that nonsense oh God okay Mishka founder Whisperer okay got it got it so

we are going to skip our normal I mean it's two episodes in a row of us skipping our normal thing that we're doing but did first actually did you need to shill anything Mish I know we're coming up on PGC London a quick shill I not even prepared for shill we had two different podcasts I think by the way the last podcast you guys did was really good like the crest telling about his daughter and then her listening in the in a room next door that was really fun that was a great episode you broke character Chris uh it's back to the old right now on believe me ky ky Cris is back that's awesome uh then we had an episode with mission one we had again executive Head Hunter back on the last episode of last year kind of talking about potential career moves as the year changes what else do we have on the podcast I know we published today the audit of the predictions that me and Cris did in istanb last year so there was six predictions made we got four on the money one was half which was ch's

prediction and one was absolutely wrong which was my prediction you can go on the blog check out check out who got it right who got it wrong and there's a lot of custom graphs that censor Tower made for us so a lot of cool stuff on what we got right what we got wrong and more predictions will be coming in in subsequent weeks we have multiple people writing them we've got marketing predictions we got m&a predictions we got app predictions but of course we're going to start off with games next week and yes PGC we have two events the Supper Club is full full but you can apply we'll see what we can do and then there's going to be the mixer it's called PGC After the Dark I'm going to post the sign up link to the newsletter so see you there okay awesome I know that we are also working on supper clubs in LA in February we're working on one so hopefully we're going to have more of those yes there's one and then of course there's going to be a supper club at GDC we just confirmed with the biggest

sponsor today so that's going to move forward and there's going to be a women's in gaming thing at GDC gen you don't know but you're already being selected to drive that uh so so we have a bunch of different events that will be happening on GDC we'll talk about that after PGC all right awesome all right that's coming all right so the golden twig Awards so here we are so this is our version of our 2024 recp we have our own categories in our way of examining things two to form for us we Tred to make this unique and different from all of the other wrap-ups and plus we also waited to do it and get well I liked cheat and read everyone else's so that we can do something different so we have 10 categories and the way that we're going to work this is I'm going to start off with what was the winner in 2023 right cuz we're doing the 2024 winners and then we are going to each give our take on what we think the nominee or the winner should be for 2024 and then what we're going to do is put

out a survey we did this last year as well where we put out each of the categories each of the ninees and then we let you the audience vote on what you think the actual winner is we'll do a podcast we'll come back and we'll talk about each of those winners cool make sense everyone all right attention marketers are you ready for an event that will supercharge your strategies and leave you talking it for months to come on January 28 in San Francisco applers takes Center Stage as the must attend event for marketers tackling the industry's toughest challenges from privacy restrictions and signal loss issues to measuring Omni CH Channel Roi and boosting LTV for high value users you'll gain actionable insights from the brightest Minds in marketing but Mama isn't just about learning it's about connecting sharing and experiencing it's an event people Rave about for months before and after and for good reasons side note I've attended one of these events it's goddamn amazing anyways

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here we go topic number one this is the topic of the year so this was the biggest news story or Trend the 2023 winner was the unity runtime fee that was so much fun I felt like a journalist during that time each of us were going to go through and give our nominee with a little bit of color so Phil why don't you go first what's yours I think obviously we have to give this to steam and right now we're looking at steam Peak users on online for each year 2024 they hit an all-time high of 39.3 million Peak users online that is up from 33.6 million from 2023 in terms of Revenue they're up even more and we're looking at video game insights by the way where the [ __ ] is this Revenue coming from there's no Revenue estimates for steam out there so so steam does so first of all it does not include MTX to the best of my knowledge we're looking at video game insights right now so we're looking at box copies and remember they do ordinal ranking like they do on

the App Store so you know if something is so they're triangulating based okay I got you based on Rank and of course like that comes with all the normal caveats that yeah that's that no that is absolute [ __ ] by the way because they're not getting any actual data I'm sure from this so okay fine so that being said steam is up we can at least look at active users which is reported by steam itself it's a first-party platform reporting and like that is up 17% year-over-year and of course we know that's driven by China but I feel like it's been a huge narrative beat this year it seems like every time there's a new game drop regardless of whether or not retains and makes a big slash to begin with steam is in a really good place congratulations to them I think it is the story of the year for sure good story I know that they had a lot of Records Mishka what's your what's yours to me it has to be the layoffs like we even had a specific category for it on twig where we were talking about every week like who fires the most almost like it it was sad and crazy it was just you know looking at the numbers

2023 which is when the layoffs started we had over 10,000 I think 10.5 th000 jobs were lost in gaming and then 2024 rolls in and we go to 14,600 jobs lost during the year so a little bit more but we also didn't talk about like what those numbers don't reveal is the startups that didn't get funding the people who took on packages and kind of left them their own and all of that so I think this accumulated talk about layoffs would be my vote for the topic of the year like 2024 was the year of the layoffs that's how I would see it got it all right I will kind of throw my hat in the ring although I think Mishka is probably on the right track the big Tech failure so again big Tech continues to fail in gaming in Epic and ridiculous ways and this includes both Microsoft and Netflix who are kind of retrenching and trying to figure out what their strategy is and it's completely halfhazard and nonsensical because because big Tech doesn't know [ __ ] all

about video games and they don't know how to make video games or do video games and their incentives and their priorities are different for video games and that has been the case for the last 25 years since I've been in this business and nothing has changed so we'll see if they can pull their head out of their Collective asses and get their [ __ ] going in 2025 but my gut tells me no so there we go got it I think Netflix is gonna reappear a lot in our conversation today so I hear you on that one Adam I think voted layoffs in addition to you Mishka and I'm gonna be rather boring and also agree with you I pulled some stats as you did we have an estimated you know 14,600 game industry layoffs in 2024 that was up from the 10,000 in 20123 you know where I want to extend this and maybe make it a little bit different is the closure and the hit

to game media game industry media so after many many years game Ander closed I think they had a 33-year run so they closed in August and then there was another really popular magazine in the UK called play magazine they were around for almost 30 years as well so those two major layoffs at game industry. Biz I know that we read those guys a lot a lot of the staff were let go from game industry. Biz so I isn't that completely shut down like there's one person left well you sure it's not shut down but yes it's it's like gonna it's gonna it's gonna limp along it's the lawyer's he's there it is gonna limp along and it was I listened to the last podcast that the guys did and it's just sad because they've been in in gaming for 15 years it was a good podcast I listen to it all the time and they've been doing it together for a long long time too so yeah my understanding is it's completely done so I guess we'll maybe get clarity

later yeah so we'll see so I I guess my extension on layoffs is the hit to the game industry media I don't know if that's fair though you know when it comes to layoffs Matthew ball has been reporting the record layoffs I mean the industry's grown so if you just look at a nominal number we don't know as a share if layoffs have accelerated we don't know what the hiring is like and that's frustrated me in all these conversations and I would say the same with media I don't think media is laid off I just think it's changed it's YouTube It's the fall of the estate the state is now it's the fourth estate you know it's YouTubers it's influencers on Twitch like it's just changed its form we can cry we can shed a tear for Nostalgia on totally on board with that but I don't think it's shrunk you know a size of GDP it's just changed its form yeah that was funny because that's exactly what I was looking up like what is the employe count of gaming I don't yeah I think these [ __ ] data it's hard to find yeah it's hard and so like first of all I don't think 14,600 is all that significant on on a relative basis to the number of people in the space and then to your point people are hiring

probably more than this amount of people like if you look at the job Rex right now I bet it's much higher than 14600 right so this is a shifting right and as I said before in the podcast ultimately when things go down like when there's Corrections in the market generally speaking this is the time for people to do layoffs without getting negative consequences to the stock and the shareholders and so companies just kind of cut things that they want to cut and they can do it without upsetting their shareholder base because this is the time so anyway it is a reshuffling as opposed to job losses as Philip is suggesting I think you're right and I think on the media side you're right Phil that there is a realignment of folks maybe not at traditional media sources as much as going into different I mean there's a lot of you know folks that are doing lights upstack yeah huge yeah and so I subscribed to many of them for the record dude Game Informer is the [ __ ] magazine of all [ __ ] things like who the [ __ ] reads magazines anymore like it's OB seede like I mean it was a great magazine don't get me

wrong I [ __ ] love that thing but like it is a magazine there's not a thing take it from the old guy to yeah and how do how do you transition into the today's world and I think that's the challenge that a lot of people are having is like you know what's today's world of that all right uh number two so this is the category called correction of the year and so this category is what did we as your industry Insider experts [ __ ] up and get wrong in a really really really big way the winner from 2023 was well this was Crest Microsoft won't acquire Activision that was what we had to correct because that actually did go through and happen so for this year for 2024 what do we think is the correction what did we mess up in a big way Phil what did you mess up in a big way why are you why are you talking to me specifically J maybe some unanimity on on this domination I'm going to be more specific it's not just Squad Busters that got wrong I think

everyone knew when the game was coming out that it had some challenges in terms of the core gameplay design maybe it was coming out too soon I thought what would really happen is that Squad Busters would become supercell's most downloaded game you know obviously not within the year but on a day since launch basis just due to the fact that this was supposed to be the superpower of the game bringing together all this IP that supercell had built out over a decade bringing together Clash of Clans barbarians which as Robo I think one of their heads of marketing had pointed out is one of the few recognizable character in Mobile putting that together with Heyday characters putting them together with Clash Royale characters like this was supposed to be the superpowers bringing all these IPS together and ultimately I think it ended up becoming its weakness or even more than that it was just apathy no one ended up giving a [ __ ] and so instead of being the most downloaded game that supercell has it's going to end the year as the least downloaded game that supercell has even lower than Heyday yes ladies and gentlemen that's correct it's lower than Heyday and so we've been talking about this game for a little bit but I think Super has a real Challenge on to either

shut this game down or to potentially use games as a platform could they incorporate this as a mode in Brawl star can brawl star grow even higher I think that's become really interesting when we see Clash mini go to Clash Royale if there's any success there I think this is going to be the first thing lined up for ball stars but it's been a year and the game they still haven't done a big enough update to move kpis it's the same as it's always been yeah I wanted to follow with the same thing but I'm going to do a different one but anyways like going back to Squad Busters I remember when we did the podcast with Matthew was the Consulting person wizard Consulting wizard that's a better one Consulting warlock we were talking about hyping up super me andu Matthew was like guys I don't know we're like yes this game is GNA make billion dollars and I remember posting it on LinkedIn and this had probably most traction as a LinkedIn post that I did the whole last year I was talking about like how supercell revenues were up 2020% how brawl star Revenue up was up like almost 800% Clash Royale 100% Heyday boom Beach all up by 20% they were killing it on the

marketing front with the hall line and Clash of Clans Godzilla bra stars and and Squad Buster was coming out like this is the biggest comeback in Mobile gaming is what supercell is gonna have in 2024 it was not the biggest comeback of 2024 it kind of turned sour towards the end good luck well where's Cosmic Lounge right I feel like Cosmic Lounge has been on a two-year marketing campaign for their match three you AI know my buddy Tommy dude Tommy with dude waxing poet about this [ __ ] for like six months dude where the [ __ ] is their game I love Tommy but like Jesus like if you're saying AI is going to help facilitate game development and this is a puzzle game for [ __ ] sake right this is not rocket science you know like how can you not have a game in market yet yeah Cosmic Lounge is a great example so it's a it's a studio that was launched by former seriously and King professional here in Helsinki and they're making a puzzle game so of course these people if anybody knows pu G and their angle was like but we are going to make it with AI it's going to be better faster more beautiful like

everything and we're not jumping in on Cosmic Cloud but using it as an example meanwhile like all the Turkish Studios that that that set up companies like year after them have already launched scaling their games pivoted to something else and we don't even know what's going on there so and and they have been like the most vocal like they were at our event when they were sh yeah they were showing so so that kind of not harping in on Cosmic Lounge but talking about about like believing the hype of AI I want to mention one thing I did the AI podcast with Peter Hyman from X-Mini clip he was doing Ai and remember I reached out to him before L I'm like hey would you mind coming and talking about how you make games with aot and he was like we pay it already and that was like last year so so that's why I was like maybe this AI story that I'm believing in is not quite there yet I think it's too early yeah I think it's too early yeah you hang out with VCS too much that's the problem I love hang out with VC you're just

listening to the the Tower of Babel and acronym nonsense you know stop love it love it those guys like stew with themselves and just like circle jerk all right what's your big mess up first of all I'm happy not to be on the primary list of this one this year because you guys really [ __ ] up on Squad Busters and I was the only voice of [ __ ] reason at that time because that game was not monetizing in soft launch and the gameplay was super casual and they rushed that thing out right and all those things I said in the podcast I was right you were wrong full stop but I will throw out myself as a Domin because I really thought Ubisoft was gonna pull it out this year I thought they were gonna execute against Star Wars and that they would execute against Assassin's Creed with quality games and good launches and they did not and I will never never trust the French ever again wow the whole nation the whole [ __ ] country [ __ ] it dude those guys are [ __ ] so I will never trust the French ever

again to pull their head out of their Collective asses but anyway my biggest [ __ ] up this year was my what about Roblox yeah what about Roblox you've been a Roblox doubter for a long time no no that Roblox he's still doubting we will see we will see let's just wait let's just wait till the holiday sales come through they've actually look good on yit and M science let's just see let's just see options haven't expired yet all right all right so also it was a plus one on Squad Busters although he wrote he was Pro Squad Busters man I we got to interrogate him about this he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't he oh he's just nominating Corrections for for us yeah yeah yeah he he's nominating by the way wait hold on on for the record Philip black this is his nomination right because he's the Oney said okay just to be clear this is Philip [ __ ] up okay yes that is correct yeah I'm he plus one but Adam

said for himself he wrote Marvel Rivals will be dead in a month that's his vote for himself my vote for what I said that wasn't great was match Factory and when I originally talked about match Factory not being awesome it was as a player because I really hate the time pressure games and so I didn't think match Factory at the time when I was playing it and and I think it was the very end of 2020 three going into 24 it's like we're looking at a chart right now on is this oh on Revenue it's doing nice it's doing like really really good work good job it's doing great no hold on hold on I I think that's revisionism if we go back to that episode I don't have the quotes off the top of my head but we were skeptical of their launch strategy because remember they started in the United States it wasn't a traditional soft launch strategy we're like oh I don't know because we had irings of squad Busters coming back to fight us and not only have they blown past you know whatever that strategy is but they continue to scale the game right I mean

now it's now it seem have topped off at about 15 million a month which still puts you at a really great run rate but we were also dunking on their launch strategy a little bit and to be honest with you who knows if they would have made more money if they did a traditional strategy or maybe they would have made less but it doesn't seem to have been a barrier at least for them yeah got it all right so category number three most damage taken and so this category could go to a company it could go to a platform bus to a genre or a business so the 2023 winner as happens a lot in our 2023 numbers was embracer who was a repeat winner in that category so Mishka who is your 2024 nominee for most damage taken yeah so this was inter string I think by the way you talked about naming this the embracer category I think it makes all the sense who got embraced the most that's funny so I think who got embraced the mor most I was thinking about three companies first like this is not the one but I was thinking about

Aristocrat because they kind of like pulled out of games like towards the end of the year there was a fire sale they were like take clar at onx Revenue you know take all these companies we're out this is we're done this is not any but not really because Aristocrat themselves were pulling out from businesses that weren't as nearly as successful where they are so it's kind of stupid to name them as uh as somebody who's taking most damage so then it was the two I was thinking about Netflix because Netflix is a joke this whole thing that is happening is just insane that the last part that we learned was that they paid what $50 million to have three GTA mobile games for one year exclusivity after which they launched they've launched now like 150 different games there's hardly any tractions they spent three three and a half billion dollars on this gaming effort and yes it's mice nuts for them but let's be honest like when this is all said and done they could have just bought scoly and and had like a real you know mobile publisher with that so that

was my one thing then I'm going to go actually back to this one this is what I'm going to nominate it's not going to be Netflix I think the most damage taking is forte I keep saying it every year so Forte is what they call uh sort of a Unity for web three games now we know that the whole market for web three games doesn't exist so let's start there we know that the company has raised a billion dollars so I think they're G just I think how much money they're making from interest it's probably insane they're like cash well positive proba every year but what happened last year was they closed down Phoenix labs they never even told anybody that they acquired Phoenix labs and kind of reading all those stories which was just like crazy like secrecy you can't even talk about who owns you and last thing that we also learned is like pretty much every single person from Network that joined them early in the days Neil long all the other guys who were like neong was like waving the flag of web 3 like he's gone he's not there anym he's been all quiet and the whole company is like a dead silent so I think Forte has taken

the most damage because the market they operate in it doesn't exist and the moves that that they have made have been Shady because they haven't announced it and also really really bad like acquiring the studio and then closing it down like three months later like oh we actually don't like dragons boom closed so Forte all right Forte Crest I honestly think it's an embracer again since the embracer award [ __ ] they literally imploded and split up the company but it's like I mean if you actually talk to canterman or I think briyan from the other game game Pixel and profits thank you they think it's like of Rise of the Phoenix right so that they're coming back I think they're both long but anyway I'm gonna go with Netflix I think Netflix just absolutely just got destroyed this year there's a lot of egg on their face and clearly their strategy wasn't working we're seeing all these layoffs of really senior people more next week on that yeah yeah we'll figure you know to to figure

[ __ ] out and start over basically so my vote is Netflix Adam's vote is Ubisoft and I'm gonna plus one that well I put a little one in there for Apple Vision Pro Crest because that would oh [ __ ] I forgot about that we forgot about Pro no you're right damn it that's got to be a nominee too though yeah stop they they stopped production it's over I know yeah Vora was like really bullish about yeah Laura's got to check herself all right so so my vote is ubis let me give you some stats just as I was looking this up I was like oh my God who took the worst damage the market cap dropped 85% from 20121 to 2025 for Ubisoft first half earnings for 2024 they were down 20% versus the same time year prior the Share value throughout 2024 Ubisoft stock

experienced a significant decline losing 50% of its value and then there is the potential buyout discussions and so remember that there was all of these reports that you know 10 cent and the family were contemplating a buyout of Ubisoft to to stabilize it to take it private so I just think from a staple company or industry to lose that much market cap 85% drop from 2021 to 2025 like oh my God that feels like a lot so that's my vote Phil what's yours I'm actually going to say venture capital I think Venture Capital ends up with a lot of egg on their face particularly with triple A Eric it's only you've been talking about forever which is that it takes so much Capital to get these triaa games across the finish line that it's really not just a venture Enterprise I mean it's Capital intensive so you think it would be a venture Enterprise but people aren't ready to commit for what that means in the long run and so I think on that hand seems like bad on paper and not only that like with super

viive and Spectre divide which we're going to be talking about later on those are ba both VC back Studios that failed this year I think in a really big and spectacular way and when I look at the winners it's all these weird steam companies you know pocket pair we'll be talking about later the developers of power world was a 50 person Studio we're gonna talk about probably monsters later which is another another Studio has Venture backed and got hundreds of millions of dollars with nothing to show it's just like nothing and and Pia Pia just died right oh Pia died I think this is a New Concept that is having Venture in AA Studios and I don't think it's working out and so I think on one hand I think you take the L for tripa a this year for Venture Capital web 3 is still [ __ ] and when I see Venture Studios say oh well we're up on our web 3 stuff because you did weird token Shenanigans I mean all these Venture Studios love to tell you that they're in it for the long run founder first all this [ __ ] and yet you're doing all this financial Arbitrage on tokens like I would not be proud of that that would not be something I'd be telling people about I thought you were

supposed to be for the long run building real value all this [ __ ] so if you're coming out and telling me you're up on web 3 because you're arbitraging tokens and not actually taking equity and just taking token deals instead bit craft some other VCS that have been doing this like I don't think that's anything to be proud of unfortunately no one is really reporting the accurate values of their Investments so they'll never be called on it right and so like that's what sucks about Ventures like it's such a long-term and like so obscured by [ __ ] I think venture did take it on the chin this year but no one's ever going to know you know I mean so like I mean not officially know no one's going to report on it right but you're you're totally right like Venture is like [ __ ] in the space right now maybe they don't even know it right this is a great Point Phil like I I might be a like I support your Venture Capital point because what happened in the crazy growth stage of of CET lockdowns is that all these VC firms raised really big funds and they were super spreading like

this funding like everybody and their mother was getting like hey I got funded like let's start there like everybody is getting funded like Cas in point case in point and so you have new funds you have massive these fund that were new gaming focused funds but now you're in a situation where the valuations are down like clarum is a great example like like you when even when you sell this company that makes a billion dollars like what's your return if it's like a fraction of what a SAS company valuation would be the market is not growing you said like couple of percentages here and there yeah but it was gr 20% so you can't even Bank on growth and then you know you end up in a situation where you're sitting on a lot of money and I think these Venture like we might be in a situation where there will be a question like do we need actually gaming VCS like a VC that is focused like a fund that is 100 million 150 million 600 million or whatever these fund our size like do we actually need a gaming VC or can it be arm of you know a journalist investor so

I think you know they it's going to be really challenging especially as they're going to lpce and showing how much markup how much valuation has grown of the companies are they able to even return the investment that's going to be tough for for Venture Capital just because they got greedy during the lockdown times all right so number four is the most disappointing game so the 2023 winner was Starfield from Bethesda I'm going to throw out there Concord because even though the anticipation was not high the absolute train wreck that it was was unprecedented from you know a first party type experience that I can remember anyway let me plus one that and and give some stats while we're on that because I I also second the nomination for Concord so it was developed by firewor Studios published by Sony and it was was pre anticipated so it released in August two weeks later they shut it down I don't think I've

ever seen a game shut down so soon after launch reportedly it it was $200 to $400 million in development to make the game you know some people say L on the lower end some people say on the higher end still that is a triaa game that is a a big fail so Phil you'll love this peak concurrent players on Steam was below 700 and the total sales estimate was around 25,000 copies for I think it was a $40 us retail game I also hate to pick on the marketing but what I remember when I saw some of the trailers was God no you don't you love to pick on the marketing go for it that's true I do love to pick on the maret operate on the patient let's go I remember seeing the marketing of like oh my God why would you do retro like sci-fi Guardians of the Galaxy ripoff with who who could possibly want this kind of marketing it didn't feel like it it appealed to anyone was not on Trend was not you know

it it looked like a ripoff of Guardian of the Galaxy in all of the bad ways so Concord is my nomination so let's go back to I actually well hold on I actually don't think you're doing enough to justify both of your nominations in terms of disappointment because remember there was some leaked Sony documents that this was going to be like their next big franchise they had hype internally about this too like they they disappointed themselves like they were on the hype train up until the absolute failure like I was shocked to see how much they were putting behind it just internally someone must have been champing it wasn't it seven or eight years of development you know it was there swing at the plate for life service and you know I remember we had a podcast with Adam this was The Toxic positivity podcast where it was like they were completely deluding themselves and no one was it's kind of the same thing with I I'm I'm surprised actually what's the name of that game that killed the Justice League Suicide Squad killed the Justice League was another one that we were talking about being on the list where no one had the balls to like look

at thems in the face and say this isn't working we need to do something different it's sunk cost fallacy where everyone's just like sunk cost fallacy we got to keep pouring money into it rather than like pull the rip cord and get out right Phils I think that's kind of all right so Mishka okay so I was between two of these mobile games of course Squad Busters say no more the game is a shark fin looks like a little bit going up the revenue again but you know Phil is showing two these two games on the graph so there's Squad Busters and Activision's Call of Duty war zone and I think both of these games had very high expectations like on Activision's part this was supposed to be the game that takes the spot of Call of Duty mobile no more sharing daos with with the Chinese like this game is done out of like seven or eight Activision Studios it's phenomenal it's you know it's homemade it it has everything you would expect and also it has the name of War Zone behind it which is like what

the biggest Call of Duty game and then we had Squad Busters that was supercell's first game to launch since 2018 and they were on as as I you know explained before they were on fire before that like they really nailed the live Ops things are going great marketing was kicking ass and now Squad Busters was supposed to be the cherry on top for 2024 so I'm kind of mixed I would say my vote goes to Squad Busters on this case because I was so hyped about it I was so wrong about it with war zone I kind of saw what happened with Crafton when they released the pubg to rival the other pubg mobile and they got crushed said like good try boys and I think the same happened again it was a counter punch from Hell straight knockout it was like a Conor McGregor winning his championship first punch knockout so so I think I I kind of expected it so I'll put in on Squad Busters okay uh let's do Adams really quick his vote is super viive and and so

he read this as you know what is the most disappointing game he had high hopes for this pre-launch and then it flopped which is why he picked super viive or Spectra divide over Concord so this was his answer I'm sad for these folks these are a bunch of EX League of Legend Riot folks and I'm sad for them but I think as we talk about many times MOBA struggle in the west so Phil let's see how it does in China remember NY has G publishing rights so let's let's see if % of League Revenue apparently from the Eastern region mind-blowing that would be my award for like fact of the year if that was a category believe that by the way it still blows my mind that that fact was out there and no one shared it with me all years dude I've been talking [ __ ] about mobas for how long and no one mentioned the fact that like 90% of the revenue is [ __ ] in Asia you know well hold on some ran employees have disputed this just to be clear no they're just like no it's not no it's not like that's no that's not

acceptable refuting all right moving on so for my most disappointing game I put Spectre divide this game is not hanging on by a thread it is dead it is done oh no we're talking about hundreds of concurrent players like not enough to even sustain matchmaking at this point if you remember this was Mountaintop Studios Lee horn was one of the game directors who was one of the major driving forces of Apex Legends is mization he's a former employee at Riot as well really really smart and talented guy and it just bombed this was a tactical shooter I thought there was something to this game in terms of having a thesis I thought it was well-rounded with the rule of thirds 33% old 33% improved 33% Innovative smart people behind it Venture backing they had some influencer marketing remember shroud was on top of this game it was shroud's game it's it's quickly how fast people forget about that oh and it is not just gone it is dead it is over for this game and I you know one of the things we were talking about in our our holiday special is like if you're top games or you're an investor what do you

do what you so you just you just spent three you know three years four years of your whole life building this game and it didn't even survive you know three months you know it was done within the first month what do you do next I can tell you you sell Aqua hire that's what happens like the same thing happened to the uh Pia should I put that in your predictions category for for Mountaintop games a Mountaintop what's the other one like it's not going to be good for the VCS cuz they put in like what 100 million 80 million into this company they're not going to get anything back so neither will the team though in in the case of aquire but it's a great team as Jen said so they gave it a go they made a game that was impressive it didn't succeed now they go go back to work that's it all right so keep in moving oh I'll also like drop a little bomb of EX defiant in here as another gonna give it to you not at all as another dis disappointment all right keeping it moving mice nuts so this is the small game that we like to play so this is like a really great creative

game not a big Revenue winner the mice nuts game in 2023 winner was Pikman 4 Bill what do you got for their 2024 all and hole baby all and hole isuck hden gem this is a game by hom our French publisher it started as a tack hole which was a game that exploded as a hyper casual uh IP and they ended up running I would argue one of the best implementations of the hybrid casual Playbook so going out with Hyper casual finding something that resonates and ultimately has marketability and then adding all of the casual or more midcore elements onto that title and relaunching it under a new IP and that's what they did with Hull and all and they absolutely killed it the game is fantastic it's a ton of fun to play they completely took everything that they needed to out of the Saga playbook in terms of extending win streaks of having things like lava Quest and episode race they absolutely nailed it I think the game's doing okay I mean we don't know what ad revenue is but the fact they got this out there I think is a Testament to them and their transformation to hybrid casual publisher and I'm still playing

to this day I love the game I think it's great it is mice nuts however in the grand scheme of things all right Mishka what do you got well that was Shilling because I think Phil talked about his client over here so no no this is a genuine this is a genuine love I have no more financial relationship with them I just I would I love I was there when a tack hole blew up and to see this transform and finally come out and for them to nail the execution is great to see cool story all right so so so I'm gonna actually use the same game that I talked about as a biggest disappointment last year that was Total War Pharaoh so I like playing Total War games and to me it was such a like it was buggy it was really short it was a disaster and even the publisher had to refund the game and do a public apology that's how bad total war baral was in 2023 in 2024 the ratings went up and they made a lot of free changes the DLCs and and this game actually picked up and it's not like one of my favorite like top five Total War games this is a

20-year-old franchise so I'll pick Total War Pharaoh as uh the mice notot game of 2024 okay all right I my first choice is batro but I'll let Jen handle that one I'm gonna throw out there as a more of a controversial pick I'm gonna say astrobot because even though the game got really critical claim it doesn't seem to have moved the needle for Sony this year despite I think it's just a mismatch mismatched of of a genre on that platform so I'm going to say astrobot my real pick is vatro because vatro is a ridiculous Game of the Year nod yeah like what I don't like about it is it gives kind of hope to like the Indies that like you can build like something really really successful but like I I even question whether it was even successful but anyway I'll let Jen go yeah so Adam also said batro I say bacho and so I did a little you know look up on I didn't look up the steam numbers because obviously that's where it first launched but on mobile it came to mobile and it's a $10 download us on

mobile and it was only $3.3 million there although they did do a deal with Apple arcade so there's batro plus where you can play that game and something let's see Phil tells me that it's 34 million on Steam according to BG insights BG insights so you know like again like my snuts you know like totally in that realm for isn't this a single developer if I remember correctly it's like one guy who made this but one other thing I wanted to say about this game something I've never seen before it has five stars on Apple with 25,000 ratings I've never seen like a perfect rating score which is kind of what you see on the screen if you're following us on Spotify video or on YouTube so well done batro all right number six most questionable move this could be an investment an acquisition it could be Talent the most questionable move winner in 2023 was Netflix Phil what do you got for this for 24 yeah I got an interesting one here this was at the

beginning of the year this was actually in January we had news that blizzard had canceled project Odyssey which is their survival crafting game and I was still shocked when they did it then I'm sure there's a bunch of problems inside of blizzard in terms of allocating resources getting new project started all the normal internal politics but if you put that aside the fact that survival crafting has been like on an absolute tear for the last two years it's just this very obvious Market signal that everyone keeps trying to send a major Publishers and apparently they're not picking up the phone but like sons of a forest is another game that launched on Steam this year and did incredible amounts of business rust has been around for a really long time and is hitting all-time PSU highs in the last year enshrouded was another one we didn't really get a chance to talk about power world we'll hear more about that later on but that is a survival crafting game we say Pokemon with guns but it's survival crafting game not only that it had a recent uptick during an update and was made with only 50 people so there's just so I mean not only just picked four games but I mean there still Arc there's still a bunch of other survival crafting games of alheim which I think was 2021 I

mean this genre keeps exploding and I keep waiting for someone to do the AAA treatment of it and to really make it mainstream and accessible like extraction Shooters have failed to do it seems like people have backed away from that and I keep waiting for it to happen in this genre and it hasn't happened and blizzard is the perfect company to do this right this is what blizzard does they take things that have Market appeal but are too rough and they make them accessible they strip them down to the core elements they did this for World of Warcraft they did for Hearthstone they did this on a bunch of their franchises I thought they could have killed this one and I'm really disappointed that Scots canceled and I question whether or not those is the right move all right M what you got okay so again this is two games that I'm think two companies that I'm thinking here Netflix Games first again it's paying what according to my reliable source which is Eric Crest $50 million to get GTA for 12 months and then parading that everywhere as a major win like when they launched that GTA like we did it baby so that was like a big win for them that was interesting

but then the other one was Squad Busters so the squad Busters launch as a questionable move they did not have soft launch like yeah there's like that 30 days no everybody was gearing up for soft launch they were already decided that this game is coming out we're gonna bet the house on this baby full sent was was the was the the move inside of it and this is going to be the biggest launch ever we're gonna put all of our ipce in one game and really show what's up no need to soft launch we're the kings of this goddamn hill we made mobile gaming like I'm just joking but this felt like like what was coming out of it and I think that questionable move made supercell look bad because this is a company that is known as to be the quintessential mobile developer they only ship hits they're very very strict of what gets past the gauntlet and suddenly they threw the gauntlet to the trash and be like let's go baby and I would say killing all your principles for one game is a very questionable move

all right Chris what do you got everything Ubisoft does I don't think they made one successful move the entire year right moving assassins to next year The Outlaws launch was a disaster keeping Skull and Bones even in Market just [ __ ] cancel and cut that team completely building Rainbow Six mobile internally are out of their goddamn minds they can't make games on Mobile X defiant nft game launch maintaining this leader the the the biggest thing is that they are maintaining leadership like in order for them to do a deal the brothers need to still be in charge of this company how much feedback do they need to understand that they do not know how to run a [ __ ] publishing company right they need new leadership there full stop right I I don't even know how many mistakes one particular company can make it's like it is unprecedented so yeah Ubisoft everything they do good one Adam votes for the Squad Busters launch I guys guys we need to leave Squad

Busters alone Jesus I kind of plus one that maybe they sweep the cap course for I want to be clear on this one because I said this in the podcast before is that if their goal was to go public anytime soon they [ __ ] it up badly with this launch like cooler head should have prevailed and realized that this game was not going to do well and that this was going to be a bad look on them in terms of what Misha just said was that they have been known to release quality games scaling games and this was not it and if they want to prove to the investor base that they can build recurring hits this is not it right they [ __ ] up they [ __ ] up badly and that is all on the executives at supercell full stop it's not the team it's not like the marketing people it's the leadership that made put this game out they should have delayed it right they should have like this makes no sense if that is their goal so anyway yes all right so mine I agree on the squad Busters launch for so many marketing reasons too I think Netflix is a repeat winner probably but so I want to throw

another one in there just for diversity all of the VC massive Investments especially in the X insert big company here the X Riot people the X blizzard people and we kind of talked about this earlier so I won't rehash all of it but that's my additional vote for a nominee for the most questionable move step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exola provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition demanded subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global success [Music]

all right so most brilliant move let's since we don't often talk about the positives because it is us but what was great so the 2023 winner was Lego and fortnite coming together and so Cris I think I mean this is your distraction on the podcast the entire year so please give all of the credit to wow right now despite all the challenges that blizzards had over the years I do think they executed flawlessly against this latest expansion so like that's good like there's a lot of things that are not going well with Bard right now but like I think World of Warcraft is not one of them so bringing this game back to one of the best expansion they've ever made is a great accomplishment for them MTG polarium acquisition is Adam's vote my vote I'm gonna stay on the Epic train and say the Disney and epic deal so back in February of 24 epic got $1.5 billion investment from Disney uh 9% stake in the company and so this is a kind of a strategic partnership I think

it was brilliant in a little bit on on both sides number one is Disney you know not needing to build their own teams giving money to epic epic getting $1.5 billion dollar that's pretty fun so that's my vote for this year Phil what do you got I'm Gonna Keep the steam tram rolling and I would say China allowing the global version of steam without VPN semile legally I still really don't know what the situation is I think it was brilliant for the Gamers of China I really don't know what's going on inside the the Chinese poot Bureau right now but I mean at least have it's made Gamers happy and it's grown the market significantly not only that they've grown their own IP blackm myth wukan had a lot of success on Steam from Chinese users right downloading and paying for it so I I think that's been a Monumental shift who knows if it will continue the one thing I keep asking is like now that we know this is a fact now that we know that you can have the global version of you can get basically get distribution in China without any of the nonsense how do you take advantage of it you know do you do your Marketing in the Chinese language in Mandarin do you have more

chinese-based characters how do you exploit the fact that the CCP seems to be turning a blind eye to this I don't think anyone's figured that out yet and I think for an adventurous marketing team I think this is an opportunity waiting for someone to pounce on oh this was actually the the most difficult category because I was thinking a lot like what was the sort of a thing where I was just super impressed in 2024 and I literally just wrote this right now and I think it's the hybrid casual pivot of many of these hyper casual Publishers that were losing their asset because Ida essentially killed their business we got companies like woodoo tap Nation om quali like you name it all these companies that have built everything their Central Tech all their skill sets around publishing certain type of games and then pivoting and being able to Now operate games that have both Ina ads and Ina purchases and I think what we'll be seeing next year is that a lot of these hybrid casual Publishers will be moving into casual gaming like we're seeing already lion Studios and other Publishers just

crushing it in puzzle games and in all kind of a new categories that we haven't seen hyper casual in so I think this type of a pivot that looks very simple on the outset but was actually something that they had to do really fast is brilliant I'm not how can you give credit to these [ __ ] Bottom Feeders you know this H hyper casual [ __ ] that we called out years ago that was never sustainable they were just [ __ ] paying themselves like the whole thing was [ __ ] to begin with I'm not giving any credit to These Guys these guys are just trash I don't pivot is brilliant like cuz cuz you thought that they were dead and it's like n bab pivot to [ __ ] cockroaches that's why they're [ __ ] cockroaches [ __ ] that [ __ ] I surviving surviving all right this is what makes mobile business [ __ ] is people is companies like this that are making crap okay I play hexas swort like crazy like what's wrong with that best ideas best ideas are on hyper casual right now HFI we just talking about HFI I got validated with a tackle

awesome mechanic the gate mechanic the pin mechanic I mean we've discovered so much about gamer psychology and what they respond I'll give you that the runner gameplay and like all right fine simpl okay got it all right moving on folks we got a couple categories still Bottom Feeders all right so this is the crush it category so this is both creative success and business success combined this is if we like Game of the Year this would be our category 2023 was Monopoly go what do you have for 2024 by the way it doesn't have to be a game yeah I'm between two because we've been so critical towards supercell launching Squad Busters we have to also give them a lot of props on on brawl stars because that game has had a phenomenal success on all the C like elements like from the marketing to actually Revenue to gameplay changes to econom like everything they've done has been really great and they fixed a lot of things and then I was looking at another one and that is Tik Tok and Tik Tok has been

Sensational in the past years like the chart here that I was looking at is the Tik toks in a purchase revenue and it's just hockey sticking it's just going up like crazy so to me I would say [ __ ] it's a hard brawl stars or Tik Tok Tik Tok is not even a gaming company I don't think it should I agree with you I think it's amazing I'll go then brawl star but I think Tik Tok really crushed it as a platform let's put it that way yeah we we'll see if they're still around in a couple weeks all right Chris what do you got they get crushed I want to give another nod to activis with Call of Duty I mean I think the Call of Duty launch was phenomenal this year and they did a really good job of executing plus you know Black Ops honestly I think it probably helped Sony more than it did Microsoft but but that's funny over overall I think like Call of Duty launch was executed extremely well on the tripa side what what do you make of that $700 million budget we found out about this week though see now those numbers don't make a lot of sense to me I'll be honest because my understanding is that they were capped in the sense that they

didn't need more money they didn't want more money to build these games and so I'm thinking that some of those numbers include a lot of the re-engine working that was going on across the different Studios and so yeah you can amortise it against Call of Duty war zone mobile though oh was it a franchise number was that maybe the like if you think about mobile and War Zone and I'm going to look into that for next week because the number numbers that I saw were like 700 million or something for one game my understanding is that they were capping spend because they didn't want more resources they didn't want more bodies and so some of it doesn't compute so I'll look at it and see if I can tease it out all right so Call of Duty Phil what do you got I think it's not even close to be honest with you and again I'm I'm going towards early January we're we're pulling it all the way back for the year but to me it's Paul world I I just I think not only from a business perspective but also from a creative perspective also just what it means for the industry I mean we know pocket pair Story by now they had failed a bunch of

different times remember the story about the USB drive they like lost a bunch of files I think someone lost USB drive they didn't take a bunch of venture capital it was a very small team they came out of nowhere I say nowhere if you remember they had the trailer that was Pokemon almost enslaved making guns that everyone just kind of turned their heads and it became this tagline oh Pokemon with guns and everyone really was captivated by that but I think what's been less understood is how they've really transformed the survival crafting genre because the Pokemon themselves I think do a lot for survival crafting right because each of the Pokemon have their own tasks and so now it becomes really accessible to have this meta collection game so I'm gonna get this Pokemon who's going to do this thing as I build my shelter this Pokemon's goingon to do this other thing so I think they've actually done a lot to advance their survival crafting genre and I actually think there's kind of a hidden fit here between survival crafting and a lot of the meta collection we see with with Pokemon like games but at the end of the day they have not only generated a [ __ ] ton of money video game ins sites has them at450 million and again that's just for Steam and so I'm assuming you combine

all these things together they've made a heap ton probably a billion dollars worth of Revenue I'm very interested to see if they scale I think 50 head count was was what I had heard I'll see if they have more they just released an update just just released an update for power world and PSU is back up again so imagine if they can get the content pumping a little bit more then I think they could have a real live service game even if they're not monetizing on IP they still have MTX but they can still have I think a real live service here this could be a forever for all right good one um Adam votes for no no I want to see this he's got his head shaking let's Debbie Downer over here come on they're gonna get sued into Oblivion dude that's what's gonna happen yeah that is a real issue by the the fact that you can't mention Pokemon like 80 times every time you mention power world like that's kind of an indication of of of where they're at in this world like when you copy something so gratuitously like of course success may follow but that is not going to last long so we'll see got it all right so Adam has black myth wukan that's a good one just you know I think

the idea of the first Chinese triaa game to have success in the west that's a big deal so I was also plus oneing a little bit of mishka's brawl Stars I don't think I've ever seen a turnaround story like this in Mobile and the real world impact of these collaborations I think they brought the idea of collaborations to mobal to life where they did the Godzilla collaboration and next thing you know the toys are selling they're on fire I've never seen a Godzilla toy sell and that is probably due to this game and so just the chart that we're showing here is just the turnaround story on revenue and downloads just the year prior was like trugging along and then all of a sudden you know in the beginning of 24 they huge Spike so I'm gonna give a different answer and it's app Lov is going to be my Like official nomination so a couple things about app Lov and I know that we all feel really really gross about kind of how UA works but listen to this company by the end of 24 Apple ev's Market Cap exceeded a 100

billion Q3 of 24 app 11 reported 1.2 billion marking a almost 40% increase year-over-year in their revenue holy [ __ ] the company achieved a net income of 434 million in the same quarter representing a 300% increase from the previous year in a net margin of 36% I mean these are numbers crash like this is like your Christmas here to hear these kinds of numbers Apple 11 stock surged 740 in 2024 positioning it among the top performing stocks in the Russell 1000 and then November of 24 they were added to the NASDAQ 100 like can you crush it more than that as a company like I don't know chis this is this is your world right this is the yeah I mean when you're the only place to advertise certain genres of games like you know this is what happens right they just they these guys are [ __ ] ruthless dude gang gangsters dude gangsters absolute gangsters they deserve every Kudo that they can get and I for a time

was like well anyway I still think they have some well they are crushing they're crushing absolutely crushing okay we got two more categories worst layoffs 2023 the winner of the worst layoffs was embracer sadly pris what do you got for 24 I'm gonna throw Microsoft under the bus on this one I mean I think the acquisition of Activision was the worst thing to happen to this industry in a long long time it's going to have long-term ramifications but they did well between two and 3,000 layoffs I would estimate you know based upon what they've said and based upon what makes sense in terms of attrition yeah we hate this category and sadly I think I have to give it by the numbers to embrace her again so on my research they laid off probably the most of any company in the industry in 24 at at 400ish which was a 27% reduction in its Workforce they affected a bunch of Studios including Crystal Dynamics uh

is it OS how do you say idos idos idos gearbox idos okay yes adios everybody the restructuring led to cancellation of 80 games and DSX was shut down which I think many people were sad about this is the last year we're doing this probably because we are over the crazy layoffs like this is something that we had to talk about when tens of thousands of people are getting laid off so we kind of have to it's worse this year kick the companies that are laying them off with this golden twig of like hey guys and my golden twig for this shitty move goes actually to Riot so they laid off about 530 employees and they had this amazing message from the CEO which shout out goes naturally to Riot comms he got a lot of kudos for that the reasoning behind it that they got too bloed etc etc it was it was really good but then the news about Arcane started coming and so forth so in the end the reason for these layoffs seems to be Huish that the

company has had it wasn't per se a business reason it was just like they're chasing all these different things they're you know spending quarter of a million on on a cartoon they had like multiple forever projects like like this fighting game that has been in development for what 10 years because it was a company that they acquired that was already making a fighting game like I remember this I lived in the US back then it was like samil based so that's what's the Tam what is the [ __ ] Tam of a fighting yeah but but just developing developing this type of a game for 10 years and and of course Riot comms is AAA level like peak of the peak like they did great message for the CEO but what's left from it is that this company has a very high level of hubis and kind of reminds me with the Epic layoffs in 2023 he like the business reason is not quite there the reasoning is just you're doing too many things and you're doing them too inefficiently and the employees are paying for it so hence I'm picking Riot yeah they did treat the employees well

very well very well which was nice I'm just saying like it didn't have to go there like you don't have to develop a fighting game for 10 years like let's just start oh you do a cartoon for like half a billion so what do you got are you plus one I'm I'm plus oneing the riot and the thing I've been learning a lot about Arcane by the way don't think that $250 Million number that was quoted by variety actually covers the full budget as as we understood it there's a lot more internal strife about that project as I understand it as well and it was a huge opportunity cost for the development team to get everything in motion so there's a bunch of stuff that on Arcane that I love to follow up on the other thing I would love to say for the Arcane Defenders out there is good luck paying someone in brand Equity I've never seen an employee get paid in brand equity and there is such thing as opportunity cost you go out and you spend $300 million on something or $250 million on something that's things you can't spend elsewhere you want to allocate your Capital to the highest value return so that you can continue to grow and not lay off employees and people need to understand that there are constraints exactly the last category category number 10 a new category and Mishka I'm gonna just

shake my head called the limping donkey it's a unicorn Jack all this is like much better I like this one a lot so this is this is most likely going to take the place of the layoffs so they're kind of like drawing into this is actually I will give props for this to fill like he sent me this meme on Instagram of like funny like new jargons for business and one of them was limping donkey and we laughed so hard we're like this is a new twig category so this is essentially a unicorn that ain't that much of a unicorn no more so Phil right so Phil to me far and away it's probably monsters so if you remember this was founded in 2016 I think it was the former CEO Bungie they haven't released a game in over eight years they raised I think 200 250 million in their series a they launched three Studios simultaneously three Studios simultaneously and you know to go back to a scopely parable for second I remember when we were at scopely we had one developer that was working on WWE champions and it's so

painful to scout developers and assign them to go through all the rigor moral they like okay we'll just put another game with that we'll put Breaking Bad and I would say one of the things that I think Javier and Walter and I really hope there is like a debrief coming out of you know them selling where like the statue of limitations have have evaporated but one of the things that I think was really Valu about at scopely is like lessons that were learned in blood were never forgotten and I think they really figured out then and there that having multiple Studios or or having one developer develop multiple games is not viable because first of all they haven't done it before it's one problem and I think the other problem is that there's a ton of genre expertise that comes with each genre and that extends the technical piece too right it's not just the game design piece it's like oh [ __ ] to run a Forex game we need server Engineers is that there's a lot of stress on the servers how are your server Engineers do you need server Engineers for WWE champions and so I think that's I think sole is softened up on that lesson but they haven't forgotten it and and so to come out of the T swing with three different Studios and 250 million in capital is a recipe

for disaster now if you remember they sold firewalk one of their Studios to Sony which is the Concord disaster I think that another project has got canceled they're kind of just down to one now I think someone please please affirm if I'm wrong but $250 million three Studios and nothing to show for it is a limping docky if there ever was one vent Venture Capital at its finest Venture Capital at its finest yes that PowerPoint deck is fire that's that's so few companies that I'm thinking about here improbable always have to be on the list that's a good always limping let's go let's go baby so Forte where talked about it but let's put in a game publisher Wildlife so this is the Brazilian company got a huge investment a billion dollar valuation by Benchmark Capital like I think Benchmark Capital probably the best investor in in my humble opinion out there like they're so smart so good like everything they do is and the people that work there amazing fund they invested in this company and what has Wildlife done since

then they have not that much they have done a bunch of rounds they got Bamboozled by the the Israelis with the publishing out of Tel Aviv that was a funny story but hopefully somebody sometimes tells then they moved into this model where they find like these super creatives pay them a big chunk of cash like like we're talking about seven figures to leave a company to establish a studio and just focus on on creating something in the city they live like the person who made merge dragons is building a studio of like 15 people in San Francisco some of the ex seriously supercell people are building a game here and then they have like bunch of these studios around the world that that was their thesis again none of that has panned out so does the company still have the valuation is it a limping donkey could be okay Chris what do you got I'm going with Niantic because Niantic had a big restructuring early last year that was supposedly like restarting and reing at what they're supposedly going to be doing and we have

heard [ __ ] and all and so they obviously are huge company and continue to be amazingly successful don't get me wrong with Pokemon go but what is the next chapter on this in this company got it Adam votes for Forte and probably a bunch of other w three companies he can't name I'm gonna throw in Netflix because I feel like it's a little bit of a unicorn in the game industry you know the loss of the GTA the closure of the AAA Studio in LA new management doing all of this big rig structure you know pour one out for lean LOM who was the head of third party games there who is now gone entering this year so just had a podcast where she was like talking about like sticking with it to companies like she I remember one of the first of all she she's really compelling when she speaks on the podcast and everyone has really good things to say about her and she's quite this podcast about like I promise you companies just stick with it it's really hard to build this if you stick with it the fruits will come and like two weeks was like the pink slip she that's awful it's awful that was bad

look it's a bad look for Netflix she is lovely and amazing and I I only wish the best for her and hope she she's probably the one that did the GTA deal right like that's her business right that we're we've been criticizing that for six months like it's like potentially why why is that part of your strategy to like create PR moves I it's so so we got we got to talk about Netflix next week I think Jen you had talked about squid games I spent a lot more time with the squid games experiment I actually think it's the start of a new strategy at Netflix games this squid games title and I think we deserves more attention okay all right so just to wrap up as a reminder so this is next steps we we threw out a bunch of nominees we're Mishka we're gonna have to talk about doing another voting forms put it in the show notes put it in the newsletter put it in the slack and then maybe my next week or the week after we will come back to you with how you all voted on the golden twigs for 2024 closing that out all right everyone see you next week see y you did it you made it to the end of

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