The Problem with Traditional VC Funding in Gaming—and Jetapult’s Solution

[Music] hello world welcome to the Pocket Gamer podcast with your hosts me Brian Bago and the ever radiant it's the host with the most Peggy insults hello Peggy how are you it's lovely to see you again it's lovely to see you Brian we kick off the year with some of the topics that I have personally curated because they are important it's about strategy it's about making it through 2025 rising and Shining because I'm always over The Optimist listen Peggy it's been an absolute Joy recording these um episodes with you over the course of let's be honest a very difficult year for the game sector but the nice thing and one of the reasons I love doing the podcast with you is it's not a group of four guys sitting around the table moaning and whining and saying isn't making games so very very hard we're bringing you the experts or bringing the people

who are are making a difference and as you say Eternal optimists us and and and trying to help people realize what how they can make things better get more on your investment do more with less um which is what we started out doing last year so I think we're slowly chipping away you know the little ray of sunshine from the Pocket Gamer podcast will out at the end of the day the numbers are showing it and I'll I'll I'll give you a little background here so you know I'm fairly cynical so when someone reaches out to me it's like yeah right but uh my been there done that attitude was broken by our next guest because I did a little bit of prep and it was just like yes this is the vibe we need to have this is the high energy this is the way we need to end it and maybe it's a little bit also in the name because you know Jed Ault it sounds like whoosh and you know it's it's just something that moves right this man Our Guest is on move as well because we have shiron tulsiani

co-founder and CEO of jedo which is a global strategic Investments company in the gaming industry they have a focus across Emerging Markets but he also knows his stuff because he was the former head of Google play games in India Australia and New Zealand so it's like coming from gaming going to investment working with organizations like Microsoft's Xbox and even founded and you'll love this Brian gole plays Indie Games accelerator which now supports small game developers from over 70 countries around the world so when I read that very both him got this energy I just have to say shiron first of all we are so lucky to have you joining us today and you brought your energy literally because you've been snacking before we even started today the recording so you are the real deal oh thank you that is that is a kindest that is nice interesting to hear

you know after all these years um doing all this in the industry and being in the background of the Indian gaming industry which has taken its time to get there um I'm just really excited to be on this on this podcast because I've had a few friends who've made it out there in Europe and you know fairly popular in what they do and they have been on this on on your podcast they have met you so it's been one of those things I'm like yeah maybe someday and you know today is someday so that's cool we're delighted that you're joining us but we we we do have to talk about the actual work that you're doing with jet Ault and your approach the scientific approach to you know sustainable investment and one of the things I've heard time and time again over the years is um investors should bring far more than just cash you know great investors need to understand the business that they're investing in and be looking to support it with expert knowledge contact and you know help it grow and Thrive not just exist not just reach sustainability so can you talk to us a little bit about how Jet Ault does

that and and where your whole approach comes from absolutely it's been in my head for the long time that um when I was at Google and even before that I've been about 20 22 years in the gaming industry it started like 17 18 oh it's a little more I'm older now but uh sorry lose track of years disappear uh but it there was clearly a and I think a lot of Studios get the sense that the capital available for them isn't necessarily aligned to their goals right and what we what I've seen because I used to run uh I built and ran this program called the Indie Games accelerator at Google and the purpose of the program it was nice small program when we started here in India and then went around the world the purpose of this program was to help St Studios evolve to the next level and sometimes the next level was to be uh funding ready how do you move from you know your uh sort of something that's at risk of becoming a lifestyle business where you just spend 18 hours a day run your own Studio to something that can

become a professional structured organization so with with the IGA what we did was we tried to divide like four or five pillars U which was you know within organizational design um product analytics uh game design and a few other things and try to get Founders to separate and identify what was their strengths uh what were their weaknesses and then work with these mentors to either double down somewhere or hire somebody else and so on and so forth so when we started off with Jed we wanted to initially build a VC that was the thesis so when I left Google I was thinking about building a accelerator light thought process with a VC model but that didn't work out and what we initially in instead built was jult where we we went in with uh this structured and scientific understanding that every Studio needs to be aligned on four or five pillars that I mentioned earlier and that the way to get them from where they are to where the need to be isn't about giving them

Capital to rapidly accelerate UA right and then leave nothing nothing below because then the product will collapse in six months to a year and you're playing this valuation game that everybody seems to be trying to out Fox each other in versus building trust and transparency with the studio and that really comes from uh my favorite part of this job which is sitting down with Founders that I find interesting and spending hours with them so it's not about the pitch for me it is about the time that I sit and discuss what your vision is why you're doing it how you how long you want to do it how much of this matters to you and what your vision is and then work out work backwards what the challenges were what uh you know prevented you from getting there so it's not about somebody coming pitching to us and telling us hey I want to build the next $5 billion game I'm going to build the next Call of Duty you know in six seven months so I need X money it's more about how does gaming drive you why do you want to make these experiences and then we work backwards and then align on the goals and saying look if you want to get here

this is what you need this is what we can bring this is how we feel you should do this is this something that works and the beauty of the gaming industry is a lot of people would just be like that's our vision is different and I love when they can say that because like okay I get it let's now try to work on another plan or step away so those are the guys actually work harder on because it does because then I'm like yeah there is a little fight there but very often they see especially Founders who worked for maybe 10 years and have gone through all the cycles of having a million dollars in their pocket one day and then you know being out of pocket and having to pay salaries the next day they get where we're coming from and adaptable founder requires adaptable strategy so that's the other part of how we think about so once we establish trust and transparency on the plan we start we look at their vision and we see how we can buffer uh between capital and skills so we say this is what your vision is these are the kind of people that you need these are the people we have and how do we now uh go with phase one but always keep

enough buffer for phase two phase three and you know switch around uh the the game The Vision as long as a Founder drives that Vision right so our approach to adaptability is making more options available to the founder that they didn't know even existed right whether those are tools whether those are genres whether those are AI systems that can make you do things that you never thought you could in you know uh innovate on ugc all of that kind of stuff uh but finally this is essentially about taking that shared vision and building that long-term strategy so if you can build trust you can have a shared Vision you can have an adaptable structure which is what jol brings that's when you're looking at evolving Studios and not building games and that's what that's what jedo I think brings and that's what I think the industry needs you know it's almost like dragon's dead right I mean you you it has to be proven there has to be all of that going on that um convinces the invest but you're

going to sit down you're going to say no here's some things I like about your vision here's some skills you lack let's let's fill that skills Gap I mean boy most Indies yeah that's exactly it it's not the idea they have their Vision they have their passion Brian you know that you work with them but oh absolutely absolutely Peggy and and this is the thing there's not a single Studio out there anywhere in the world working on games that that are short of ideas but it's not the ideas it's the execution and it's building the team around that can not just bring that idea to life and execute on it but the next one and the next one and as you were saying Sharon you know no founder can do everything you know you've got some people who are interested in the business side some people who are interested in the user experience some people who are just you know technically or creatively focused on the game but they need to be aware of the rest of the context the bigger challenge so that approach and building those teams I think is very very smart you know it's as you say you know you're

only only as good as your next game so I I love it I love it I think it makes a huge amount of sense no thank you a lot of us in our team come from entrepreneurial backgrounds like families you been entrepreneurs for for a few Generations um and the one thing I sort of always noticed was that true entrepreneurs don't see themselves locked into one business or one idea and adaptability is required and um I think the challenge for the gaming EOS system in a lot of countries is that they started pegging themselves to these Hero Stories of the founder as the hero right it's like I got to do everything and I got to be a billionaire I have to you know do everything myself and if this doesn't work then I'm nothing and um I spent a lot of time just talking to Founders because of the IG and I spent a lot of time just sort of helping them figure out that this is not you know it is a business you got to love it but um if you can bring that maturity of uh a Serial entrepreneur or long-term entrepreneur to your

current uh project then you can flex and bend in ways that maybe you couldn't have thought of doing it earlier I have a followup here because it struck me this reminds me again of you know our panels at PGC where people talk and it's standing room only because investors are really talking about the conversations they have and it's interesting to me Shon because you are interested in having those conversations there are those who just want to see some sort of balance sheet give me the numbers and we'll figure this out but that makes a lot of difference that has huge impact but I'd like to know from your perspective what do you hear or what are you looking for in a conversation that is going to get your attention it's going to be compelling I'm not saying give the Indie the script because of course when they come and see you should they after this show you'll know the real from the

let's say staged but there are elements in there what are you looking for oh it's a great question um you know there's a technical answer to this which is you know size scale and a few things but I don't think that's necessarily you know uh worthy of this podcast in that sense uh but I can talk about our approach and what we like hearing and what has worked for us in the past so in context Jed's approach is not and the model the fundamental structure isn't about investing in a large pipeline of 100 Studios and then you know taking the equity risk but in that manner we take Equity risk in a different manner so we believe that we've got the right capital for the right kind of Studio because we're designed for a certain type of Studio we find that uh when Studios come to us few things that come to mind for me is that they've been around for a while so it isn't your first year into the business where you have an idea you you're an established business um you you have been trying you've been around

for 3 4 years at least uh both are most recent acquisitions or both stre and Investments Acquisitions um are I think close to 10 year old Studios right which are typically not something that are on a VC's radar because they they're uh you know VC's require separate sort of base level to multiply all um for us we we like that these Studios knew what they were doing they've tested extensively in their genre they have a reasonable understanding of what works and what doesn't work but they also understand what the opportunity is and what is limiting them from getting there right and that limiting conversation is what where we come in we say what is stopping you of course capital is one of those pictures and that's so one thing we don't doesn't work for us when a studio comes and says the only thing stopping me is capital right because I believe that that um that's incredibly optimistic and if

the only thing stopping you to do 500x is capital um I'm sure there are VCS just be like here here's the money to a BET right uh but for us it is about what can we do uh that increases your chances of success significantly and share that responsibility with you com in as a co-founder so that space is what I want to hear I want to see where we fit in um so while they're pitching to us the part of the pitch is how do we fit into that pitch we we can bring a certain amount of drisking in in how we bring capital in for you because we do we have both sides of types of capital we have we understand high risk and low risk capital and we can make those available to you as part of our portfolio um and we can bring the talent and the expertise for example with with user acquisition uh we have a user acquisition a growth team that's centralized and so not only are we helping you with certain types of capital which is equity driven but we

also bring in lowrisk capital for scaling separately and that is buffer or built with you with a growth team that we can that sort of either trains your team or works with the team or helps plan things out so the drisking is something we can bring what we would like to see is if you have this now now what's your vision now how do you get there what can you do with do it so that what can you do with the people you know not just the money what can you do with the people uhhuh so the people I'll just I'll just ask one more time because people is important so what are the characteristics of these people we've talked about they need to be adaptive need to Pivot as Brian pointed out um have a vision not just want money because money is easy um you want to your own model is invest and operate so you want to get in there but who do you want to get in there with I mean what makes you excited about a studio when

you're talking with them quite a few things I think one is Studios who I mean I'm going to talk more on them s the boring side of this Studios who really figured out High R po markets are very exciting for us um and that's because they've I I think the way I would see that is Studios that have figured out how to give great value to Value to to to users who I saying great great quality to users who who are competitive with that quality so even with them having a smaller Studio smaller team what they're able to do is get in that quality and then extract some value for that and where we can come in is then help them extract more value from it and most I know it's most it's it's a terrible thing to say when when you're talking about gaming but you know just the truth of that matter and and the idea behind is can we now take your expertise and build more quality experiences and get more value out of it so that's one one key area um so these games uh these Studio Founders are typically also uh have a have a great

sense of culture that of the people that they're they going after they're sort of able to uh understand the unique market like with UMX Studios For example uh the founder is is is is from Saudi Arabia he is Saudi or a lot of the team is Saudi and they understand a very very unique genre of racing that I don't think anybody outside of the region understands so while you have the asals of the world uh when when we did the launch of the new game driftx from UMX just after you acquired them we help them fix it we hit number one on charts right beating all these guys because it was a cultural thing that style of racing doesn't exist anywhere else in the more like just how Tokyo drifting exists and you know the US has a different type of racing uh the Middle East has a different type and that's a blind spot for a lot of other people so um Quality and sort of a unique cultured approach is something that we I two things are value very strongly um ever that's where your question was going

sorry I was trying to get that I didn't didn't want to interrupt you but I just wanted to underline that point I don't think we've heard anyone ever on the show really point that out Brian that it's about unique games but understanding the culture that is really so important I mean it's that Global local that we've heard for years exactly so Peggy you know it's we we've spoken to literally hundreds of people on the show Shon and and I don't think anyone's put it quite as elegantly this is totally fascinating Sharon and and one of the things that really stands out for me is the fact that jet Ault has a a really kind of multiple headed approach you know you're not just an investor you have a role in publishing and as Peggy said earlier as an operator as well so can you maybe pick that apart for us a little bit because I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people out there wondering exactly how that works and was that your was that your goal from the outset or is this something that's kind of evolved no it's it's interesting um I I'll address that in two parts so I I will talk about how we how it evolved you know the logic behind

it and then how it looks today and how it works today uh in Practical real world uh you know experience that we've had now running these Studios and working with these Studios so um the first thing was once you after building a couple different accelerators at at Google and seeing these Studios do really well it was sort of in my head that I had to continue with the support structure um and the opportunity was to move outside and and do it um but the initial thought was VC was to be so you know there were there's a group of people that we got together and our different support Partners in the ecosystem and VC made sense but what we realized was um and my co-founder Yash who who comes from a VC and then he was like again this is not this model necessarily doesn't work and what we realized is typically Studios go to two big financing U routes when they want to build a business one is Venture Capital uh the other is Publishers because that is functionally capital uh and then there are other smaller things are becoming more popular like say UA

specific financing or it depends on where you come from debt so broadly you have these four uh routes that are publisher will take VC being the first or the publisher being the first depending on how far along they are in their in their cycle and the challenge with these is like a a publisher often will you know because the ref share agreements and sort of predatory at times not all but you know there are there are those guys um they deplete the long-term Revenue uh that a studio can build because they take the best game out and the learnings don't go back into the system the studio while they work on a game basis they don't work on a studio basis the studio can often be left with their best ideas and and talent focusing on one thing where they don't get the long-term benefit of it right either on a on a even on a valuation basis because Revenue sits outside whereas when we started structuring Jed we realized the best way to get a creative and passion-driven business of moving was to make sure that the funding offered strateg was strategic so it let the student retain control over their creative and

operational decisions through an understanding between both parties and then all the learnings that we use the central team to IDE stayed within the studio so it upscaled and thought the founders or you know brings different ideas to the founders that stay within the studio and longterm that is better for the business so with jold what we looked at and saying look can we operate and we modeled out how to operate with more realistic growth expectations where it is about sustainable long-term capital sustainable development and it's about the portfolio success your game portfolio and us as a whole our success because we're going to synergize we're going to use you know you're going to advise somebody else somebody else going to work with you we're going to figure out how we can all come together and build this this um village as an ecosystem to build great games while you own your own space Also and so it's not about chasing these vany metrics that make great headlines or inflated valuations that make great headlines it's about building a business uh what

the next 5 years is going to look like the way we ended up doing this is we modeled it out we realized that the uh outcomes at at a later stage are actually many times more than what you could get uh from betting it out so where about fewer Studios and and uh that was the approach that sort of clicked and that's where Jed's ideation came about now in order to do this what is it that how how does it work right how does it real work in the real world what makes it work well or smoothly sort of keeps the founder in sync with us and keeps them as excited and driven and you know not feeling like they're uh broken is the way we structure our support for for1 right so it is about saying okay we're going to be uh we are when we say we bring publishing support we aren't the publisher right it is about turning the found the studio itself into self-publishing front for for its own games uh which some of them do of course many of them do but bring in the um the

Systems and Technology the the comprehensive publishing support behind them so it's not about having jedo out there with with a name with a game uh that's been published it's going to continue with with holy cow Studios or YX Studios or whatever third Studio which where in the process of closing is uh we bring in the expertise the and this includes things like platform relationships right you want to work with um the the the mmps you're working with uh appen you're working with all these guys you want better relationships support marketing support uh uh payment terms right uh something as simple as not simple but big as uh your your debt your payment terms in terms of your timeline right sometimes when you're smallest stud you're prepaying and it just messes up your cash flow and so even with the best game at the right time let's say you got this great thing going for Christmas but if you're waiting for the 60-day roas and you don't have the cash how do you survive and so that's where we come in we we going to negotiate better terms and we can work out between us how to manage the cash so don't worry about it another thing so we build with that is

we bring in the skill so it's not just hey Take the Money and Run but it's about this is what you want to do okay here's you know our publishing guy sit down have a chat you know and and figure out if you've got what it needs do you have the number of creatives you need do you have playables uh do you have a subscription to playable service okay use ours here's you know sensor Tower here's this let's work it out together um and that's what we bring to them so most Founders immediately see the value in that and finally I think it is being very data driven in our conversation with them so it's not necessarily me saying hey I'm sh I have 25 years of experience in the gaming industry this is what you should do it's more about you have this great idea let's you and my an analyst sit and work out why this is the right idea let's what is the what is the numbers behind your intuition so you can understand your intuition better and often they are right the numbers do support the intuition but now we know exactly by how much right um and that's work really well so that data driven approach um

initially and I'll be very honest a lot of Founders get a little thrown off by it because they are very instinctive people but as they embrace it it works better so I think these three elements uh help keep things uh smooth as you said I'm just thinking the whole time you don't discount intuition because entrepreneurs have intuition you know at the end of the day somewhere there's a hunch there's a voice there's a feeling there's a gut feeling so you're not discounting that uh what and you're embracing it but you're combining that with the data which I think is really important you know if you just sort of say oh no it's not in the data because too much data also blinds you at some level to the bigger picture so it's that balance and that interest I think in as you put it at the start being sustainable I think that's a key key differentiator here I I have to say it's this is this is the Smart approach you know it's for all that we're talking about how you guys help the studios help

the developers to to um succeed and build that that sustainable business this is the Smart approach to investing because I I have been involved in a number of startups where the the investors have loved the pitch they've loved the slide deck they've loved the numbers it's there a hockey stick here's the money and then they stick somebody on the board step back and go good luck but you know they they're not doing anything so they're not offering that kind of practical handson help to grow and evolve into the business that it could be so I I think that model works really well you know you had your the andreon horz horz era of of big VC and you know it worked and it worked for a lot of Industries I think it'll continue working for a lot of Industries but I think gaming is just a different beast and and thinking of gaming in the same way think of software or apps is is where I think people get tripped up so we're going to talk about one of your investments in a moment is to that but then we're going to have people in the

audience saying this sounds great but what does it deliver what kind of growth have you seen when you're working with Studios of course you heard about the the newest uh but I give it give it in different terms and this maybe I think developers will be able to extrapolate certain numbers from it so with UMX which we recently um started working with um UMX has built two games in 10 years and recently released a third game and we help them through the testing launch process and and all of that and everything from our um BD which is what we call plug-and play where we can plug into our system of all the BD relationships and systems um and then of course the data team going in and our data engineer and team helping you build a better you know better information system with mmps and everything sitting in then all the data coming out and all of these things allowed for better testing and better um understanding of what users want just on a very uh granular level and as a result um when

the game launched it was number one in the region right on both I think the Google on the iOS store and and and Google play um and that was a far cry from where the previous games had been so to to stay for a serious amount number one your region um and generate maybe Revenue at a 6X of what you thought it would be for that launch period I'm not saying you know just just talking about the games estimation it was one I think big win because it is in in this sort of era where now where with you know Organics I think everybody's complaining about how businesses grow naturally and everything's about UA um to get to use the tools and solutions and the relationships out there to push you to number one uh with hype I think is is a very efficient way that's one thing that was just really quick example but with our older studio uh that we have uh we've had a significant impacts I think on most um monetization metrics straight off the

bat like just uh the arpus are up again huge amounts right that's that's the first one of the low hanging fruit that we work with is to see what we're missing with the ad networks what was missing with uh you know first transaction buyer conversion all of these things these metrics we look at what's missing to tweak them so we can get them a little bump with our we have a fantastic product team from zing and we have you know game designers who've done I think you know5 to8 billion of Revenue again with Zinger and other companies um who who lead our teams here and so they come in and they kind of help you break this apart but one of the most exciting things that I I feel is that every next game that the studios built made after we've come on board has been better on every objective metric right so retention would be like 50% more than the last one straight up right D1 is just huge huge compared to the last time but so is engagement so is buy

conversion so is you know number of sessions a day so every metric is you know plus x% and that cumulative am impact is huge because even as a it's not not just us the whole team right the producer the developer the the designer the the tester everybody's happier everybody's like yes I did something I contributed the numbers are up um that's the other thing I think morale is higher across the studio so I would say both on the game and the studio metrics and the team metric uh things are uh significantly higher 50% Plus in in a lot of cases especially for new titles but that's that's the most I can say I I I apologize for not to give you a number no morale matters I mean I'm I I was into the K Factor years ago I mean I believe in intangible so you know it is it it's in the equation we just haven't maybe figured that one out but you are close to maybe decoding that hopefully oh yes another thing so we talking about we didn't talk about AI but

we uh we're cost efficiency is another great place in terms of um maybe turnaround time so uh we were trying we've been fiddling with co-pilots for a very long time and our team is now fully trained so uh all development work is at least 65% to 70% faster now uh which is huge um because you know we certain some some these markets the cost of talent can be lower already so we're speeding up they're doing so much more and they're doing better work which makes them happy happier that they're happier doing better work and you know things don't fail and QA testing gets better so that entire Loop is better but um art uh one of the things that we've done is rebuilt entire pipelines through AI so uh the way we have it is we have a small team that sits with each team and then sits with trains them and explains what what exists in the AI Universe we hold sessions and seminars within to train them and then we work with them to say will this work will that work what's your process so right now um I think our art um 3D sort of rooms that we develop

from a home design game are down from uh I think 150 hours to 45 minutes wow so we're able to make 10x more rooms right and that's because we were building 2D to 3D 3D to 2D pipelines to do lighting and to shading but once we cracked the lighting and shading uh and 3D assets are still quite hard but we found some workarounds um we're working with this really great um a consultant who comes from Apple uh worked on Apple Ai and a bunch of other things and I think Mercedes-Benz Vision AI uh called Dr Arjun Jen and he uh works with us and S of figuring hard 3D modeling with AI so we have these you know really small uh hypers specific but Elite sort of pipelines that are building really cool solutions for this sort of impact for studios and there's a that's currently in house I'm I my vision is to be able to build it for all our Studios

and then just open it for hopefully free to the world just like you know we're making money through this so now you can just use it and build better games yeah people would love that tool wouldn't they Brian you know oh absolutely absolutely and and again it's a smart approach you know process evaluation just because we did it this way for the last game doesn't make it relevant for this game you know we we we hear all the time Shon there's no one siiz fits all so constantly reevaluating as you said earlier dig into the data look at how you know continuous Improvement is is just the way forward but I do have some questions for you guys CU you guys see a lot more and honestly that's what I wanted from the podcast was a question was a chance to ask you guys about gaming in AI okay because my LinkedIn feed is full of like everybody and their uncle has an opinion Peggy Brian with with everybody you've spoken to um The Hot Topic right now is AI and gaming people are predicting all sorts of crazy things right it's going to be nuts it's like I there there's extreme you know

world destruction chaos in cing and and there is like hey everybody's in Utopia everybody's got every game that you can dream of is now made in so everything is perfect um but realistically when it comes to teams when it comes to um the kind of people that you met and what they can build what's your prediction for 2025 oh you go first Brian you're working so much with your events and speaking to so many and you've got Discord blowing up right there um did I do and I think if uh any of our listeners knew just how much stuff H Gemini helps me with they would either be appalled or delighted depending on which side of the fence they're on and to be honest with you Shon it's there's still a huge amount of cynicism out there um from the development Community especially in my neck of the woods it's going to take our jobs we're all going to die alone you know it's it will be used by cynical corporations to exploit everybody um I don't think that's the case it will absolutely help find new

ways of working it'll make things more efficient it'll help you become more creative um so I I think it's actually a force for the good I think it's going to be very positive um and it's once it's kind of Incorporated we've got this s of the llms within the tool sets that game developers are comfortable with uh I think it's just quite naturally going to start bleeding in so I I think the the hows of disapproval will quite and write down um and so yeah it's I I already uh see a lot of very clever ways that some technically and creatively talented people are making AI a part of their roles and it does as you said it just helps make them more efficient they're doing 10x what they used to um and so finding a way that works for you is is a big big part of this you know nobody is going to impose it upon you uh in a lot of ways so you know figuring out how it how it helps you I think is a big big

part of everybody's Journey I'll draw a mind from some of the coolest discussions I heard at roia con made me think of what you just said actually Sean because there was the discussion about what we need is we also need continuity you know and this is an everchanging industry and you know you might have this team then it's over there and this that and the other so the whole idea was you know if some entity can keep the continuity that's a lot of knowledge that will be shared and passed on and that's something that you lose the way we currently work there is a lot going on in a studio there is a lot lost what would happen if we were able to keep that knowledge and keep those opportunities I think that we have so many opportunities that we cannot take advantage of because we cannot either we don't have the continuity we don't you know somebody had a great idea they left what was that idea it's gone or it went with them or you know or a brainstorm who writes it all down um that's what

I'm thinking here that's phenomenal I didn't think but essentially it's not just about generating something new which has always been the debate and the challenge does can AI really build but not necessar yeah it's about capturing what was lost what was normally lost you know intellect I think if if you look at the previous generation saying there was physical waste in energy and industrialization and computers did that for us it got rid of the physical thing we're looking at potentially not losing any intellect ual capacity intellectual um you know you're moving intellectual friction um because one of the things that ideas are based on his memory and and context if you always have memory and context then you yes and you can tell me you know at the end of a long day Shon where is your mind right mine is mostly fried and there's a lot discussed right even in this podcast we discussed a lot of cool things I'm like this has to be an article for Pocket Gamer well let's see if I remember this on Monday right I remind you article poxs um are reading Time Magazine no uh

that be cool there you go I know you'll remind me but yeah it I think it's more of that I think it's more of that and if that's that then I I I stop full circle where we started then I can be very optimistic about the future because we will have knowledge to share because we will capture I think we can end it on the happy fun note that we always end our podcast Brian we do we do it's we we like to bring things to a screaming Halt and um and drag it back to the topic of games Shon um so two questions that we ask all of our guests and they're they're going to be coming your way in a second so first is what are you playing right now what's obsessing you what are you maybe spending too much time on and then second one is what is your favorite game ever Oh I thought this would be a serious question but I have a I guess my answer is serious and depressing so is I struck me recently because and I'm really slow about this speggy Brian I think I made a mistake by getting to the gaming industry simply because I turned my hobby and my passion

into my work right and I I have all the hardware I have everything lined up on Steam and I have this thing but I also have two kids now uh my wife's you we live in a place with a lot of outdoor stuff and I MH I just have been unable to make time and it's it's it's it's it's messed up and it's as somebody who does what I do it's kind of like I play a lot of games I play a lot of games for work so I'm testing games and I'm I'm playing games from around the world on the phone but I didn't finish cyberpunk you know I've Got The Witcher loaded at some random level um and I'm Too Proud to do walkthroughs anymore so uh you know and I I spent more time I think you know doing a little bit of d and d and then taking my kids out and be just yeah D you know they they being on the beach and that's why we're here so we spend a lot more time there I would love to say

the last game I have left at this point is cyber Punk and that's how two years ago um besides a bunch of mobile games but my favorite favorite games are um two which which are obsessions for me and they are dangerous and I tell my wife if I ever play them again because she has to monitor me um you're among [Laughter] friends glad you understand that um it's harder after 40 to kind of justify some of these things in in your head at least uh one is civilization right so I'm a sid May's fan I my first my first thing that I did in my life I started my first company at 16 I started like before everybody else just I get money to buy that game which was super expensive in India uh that was the first thing um so my life gaming life s of started with that at 15 or 16 so to started with save 2 and know the games it came with books remember games came with books and you can read them and they were like them that was that was where it started

Civ 2 and then the Civ genre throughout uh and the other is the Old Lucas Arts stuff so Grim Fandango was still one of my it makes me cry at the end um oh yeah that was the game that made me feel like oh this is gaming like oh I played a game and I'm emotional and I'm a 15-year-old emotionally 14y old closed off person but a game made me cry like you know uh not very Macho but that kind of got me into so it's still one of my favorit Reis every few years I play it oh it it's it's a classic it is an absolute Stone Cold classic and and the storytelling the whole point and click adventure you know was down to their game so I I completely understand and as a father of an 8-year-old guy I also play a wful number of games um I I can hear this the sounds of Roblox from the back seat of the car but the last time I switched my PlayStation on I think was maybe Christmas holidays last year here well that's where it all comes together I think in you Shon as

well we've got here a model bringing it all together and I think offering our audience a lot of anything else Brian it's about choice and options and we have brought another one to the table just so that everyone makes an informed decision the one right for themselves I like to think we subvert expectations with every episode Peggy you know we we we speak to people that I think a lot of our listeners will never have come across and and this has been absolutely joyful um Sean it's been a complete pleasure speaking to you we'll have to have you back paths will cross absolutely been a joy Shon and thanks to you and thanks to your lovely team that brought us together I mean things happened for a reason absolutely I'm I'm just so glad that this happened I'm so excited and um likewise I I was very nervous coming into this and this has just been an absolute blast and you guys are first of all amazing and making people feel comfortable um but it's been it's been it's been a lot of

fun 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 @ PG Biz 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 SLP 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 a 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 the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and saltz and that's a wrap until next week