TWIG 130 | EA Battlefield Game, Epic vs. Apple by WSJ, Blizzard Overwatch Leadership

what's up everybody welcome to twig 130 we've got three articles for you first ea announced this new battlefield game from the wall street journal second fortnight's mastermind goes to battle with apple for also from the wall street journal and finally new leadership for overwatch from the blizzard website you've got myself joe kim aka jay diggity eric kress mishka katkov and adam telfer what's up guys what is happening joseph is still here yeah what happened second to last episode next week yeah we'll see we'll see we'll see he's taking a break there was so much good positive like comments like joe you can't go i knew it so he's gonna like the way i imagine this going is joe is gonna be a walk away for a while and then he's gonna hear so many words on the street and he has and he doesn't have like the

thousands of you who are listening to this to tell about these little secrets and he and he'll be posting it on on the dpf slack and he'd be like you know what let me just jump in on a broadcast yeah he's gonna get so bottled up he's gonna explode yeah you come back on the podcast got it so we're just waiting for that anyway i think uh we'll see you back joseph all right what do we we gotta get going everyone has nine o'clock we all are like busy busy busy bees let's do this guys um let's get to the update so idfa has deprecated and basically what we will see right now is what will happen to those that were proactive and have done a lot of busy work ahead and got the extra time as apple postponed this deprecation what will happen to them compared to a lot of big players that we all know who have opted to just wait and see what happens so this is going to be an interesting moment of truth of what has been the

right strategy and we will see this you know happening in real time so let's move on to the next part i think eric suffered is going to join the podcast probably next episode so he's going to talk a lot about uh what he's seeing on the streets when it comes to aydah fade application second update mighty kingdom so this is an australian developer is ipoint at a 46 million dollar valuation so according to sensor tower i found one of their biggest games called ava ava's manor so it's kind of solitaire plus that sort of a playwright's base progression that game is their biggest one is making about 400k net a month and it's actually not published by mighty kingdoms it's published by you can games they have their own published games and the account is showing declining installs in revenues with self-published games making around 30k net a month they also have steam games and of course i don't know how well those are doing but um yeah so my take of it is of

course i love australia fantastic country hidden gem you shouldn't talk too much about australia how awesome it is i just don't but when it comes to mighty kingdoms i don't kind of understand how comes a company so small is going public and it's almost makes me question is like is there no vcs in australia like i think this amount of money can be can be raised especially if you have an ongoing business so a little bit of a questionable uh ipo um again i'm not sure where they're ipointing at so but they didn't raise 46 million right yeah they raised they raised 46 million oh yes at that valuation okay yeah that's the valuation it was i i just jumped in and right away and kind of started looking at what they are you know what their current games are looking at and it because it seemed like such a small valuation for for a company that's going to ipo and we've seen relatively like bigger companies that than this let's say like next games from finland um joe knows them really

well they ipo'd and they were so reliant on a single game that was live that that you know ended up costing them and that game was walking dead and they made a second walking dead so at least they have like a powerful strategy of working with brands but but it's it's uh it's yeah it's a big question mark anyways i don't know i i'm actually a huge fan of muddy kingdom um and union games i think they're um of course they operate at a much smaller scale uh also yeah australia is not great for investment uh unfortunately anywhere else in the world i don't know australia dude they have 25 million people in australia dude that's even less than canada dude yeah you know canada i can get investment i can get invested yeah no california has 49 [ __ ] million people dude that's why australia is tough because there's just not a big resource of people to like fuel companies right finland has six million hold on it's impossible to manage to yeah but you bring in people from all over europe dude australia is in the middle of [ __ ] nowhere dude like

come on let's let come on i've been we've been dealing with australia ever since i was in this business about managing teams out there it never seems to go well so moving on anyways uh pragma gg a back and game engine for smaller studios a lot of the folks there are from riot they are still in beta and they have raised 12 million series a so shout out to eden chen and joseph already and joseph did a podcast episode with them oh yeah yeah yeah you can find it those guys if you don't know them you should get to know them they're super solid team yeah the ceo i know the ceo great guy um so anyway shout out to to the team hopefully their scaling goes well hopefully they're able to sign all the best clients and move forward uh very very talented folks working at program gg third update payment service company xola has announced it's now helping game developers maximize their potential with new matching service aiming to offer exit strategies

so their chief investment officer dmitry burkowski i hope i announced pronounce this right said our matching connect our matching connects investors with properties aligned to their business goals ensuring mutually beneficial outcome for both parties the article also said it's worth noting that exola exit strategies which is the service will not take any fees or compensation in connection with the matching and referral of clients to financial advisors nor will it have any involvement in negotiating the terms of or executing any transaction that may ultimately result from any such referral so after reading this article i think like point number one is consider changing your communication agency it was just purely communicated a very impersonal very lawyerish term it was hard to understand what are they really doing there was no cases where they would explain it it felt like it felt like a technical press release and number two i'd say

welcome to the podcast tell you in your own words what is it that you're doing because it sounds definitely interesting oh that's a god that is so strange because they reached out to me and we talked about this these guys are totally legit right they're really got you know their finger on the pulse of what's of all these smaller developers so they are in a unique position to like represent small developers but i didn't read the second bullet like what the [ __ ] are they doing like exactly it's like if they're not they do a good job of telling you what they're not doing what are they doing right so let's uh bring them on uh yeah i really like all those guys they seem pretty smart and savvy and been doing this stuff for a long time so they are a podcast sponsor by the way yeah they are they are a friend of the podcast it's gonna be in the background so we have to be especially critical of them we have to be especially critical of them yeah anyway we're hyper critical of their communication agency and final one another partner of the podcast appsflyers app monetization track strategy for ios

they released a complete guide so go to appsfly.com and read what appslier has to say about the monetization strategies in post idfa era usually they're they're uh their case studies are pretty good i like that they do the benchmarks there's usually kabam is one of the benchmarks and you can actually read what the hell is happening in the context of games rather than this legal term of nonsense of what what they are not doing anyway off to the next one so adam what do you got going so for diablo immortal um i actually finally got a code eric did you get a code i did get a code yeah right right after you did so yeah have you have you played it yet no you haven't played it i have and i i i ride your bullet i'm like dude that's exactly what i've experienced this feels like diablo and then i was like well i've done this before i'm done i'd rather play on the pc but that's not a good good indicator it looks it's beautiful game yeah so far and i had the early level it's it's

diablo 3 on your phone it's great um obviously like they've done a lot of work here and like building up like net ease level mmo um but then again like i i've been playing for you know less than 10 hours so far and i still have to get into the deeper loot progression because yeah the fact that there's no like monetization within the first 10 hours is a little scary um but yeah well they do have the battle pass and they do have the rifts but it does there's nothing in there in the first 10 hours yeah exactly i mean like the core loop there is no core loop i think like and so like i i it was so funny because like i think i two or three people from blizzard reached out to me like on on discord or whatever and they're like gotcha you know we have a pvp end game look at that there's our monetization cook you know i'm like yeah but like okay that's good i i actually give them credit for that but like if you have no core loop that's reinforced by elder loops like it's like impossible to like build up that like early modernization and keep people

engaged anyway whatever we will see uh i will i'm doing my rant later and we'll we'll probably you know discuss a little bit of this as well so the gamers i love when eric talks you know systems design when the elders when the elder loops have to loop into the core loops and all this kind of stuff dude i was going to give you a compliment later and now after that [ __ ] yeah you're done you're oh it's over okay thanks thanks uh dexter's apex legends is announcing their new permanent game mode uh called legacy um so it looks like a cs go or valorent style game mode um where each round you're rewarded based on performance and you can use those fonts to basically upgrade your loadout for that next round um personally i actually really like this play apex battle royale has been slowly growing actually in the shadow of fortnite and valorent and warzone but they needed some sort of big live content that excited players to bring them back

and i think bringing a brand new about brand new game mode is definitely a good play and the comp is actually looking at stuff like crossfire um i know an asian comp a bit odd but still it's a great example of a game that actually competed by trying to be a collection of modes for many different player types rather than being say the best battle royale or the best team deathmatch style game um so you know that this could be an open door to say you know this is a slightly different strategy to kind of take on the big uh the big fish in the pond um definitely gives a new reason for streamers to come back talk brand new strategy about the game also gives them more design space for characters because characters are notoriously not a very scalable design space so if you look at warframe league of legends rainbow six siege they all show signs that they really can't design that many characters that are all equally as compelling and they all end up splitting up their cosmetics so i think like ending up bifurcating all these modes late in live actually creates situations where a character could be great for one mode but maybe not for

others uh which of course from the ccrpg playbook is actually really really good for creating compelling scalable content uh the only worry here is that it increases live development costs you have you have two pools of players needing you know maps and and content but overall these modes of course share events share cosmetics so assuming that ea is scaling up the live team for this game which they should because it's growing um this looks to be a brighter future for apex on pc console by the way when did this this mode release for apex i think it's coming out i think it's uh okay because i swear like everything is falling off a cliff right now in terms of engagement like we're getting over that that comp on on okovit right now and and and basically like gta is dying nba 2k uh call of duty is still really elevated but it's starting to fall as well so where are you seeing this data you've seen it from like steam charts so you're saying xbox and uh and m science some other stuff but anyway the point is is that apex is

crushing it i mean they are absolutely their last season was one of the biggest seasons ever and i'm trying to understand exactly what's going on maybe we talked about podcasts last time was like shroud is getting more involved with the game and other like so i'm trying to figure this out but this mode actually could continue to elevate them as they bring in a different way of spending and different like uh different i don't know i don't know if they're going to introduce new ways of spending i haven't seen that from the video it's just engagement yeah okay cool all right few updates from me note for the audience in case you aren't aware three mobile games to watch out for coming soon first just talked about apex legend so apex legends mobile is headed for soft launch in india in the philippines it may actually already be out it was announced as coming sometime in late april also shout out to the team at least on the u.s side working on that game we know a couple of folks on the u.s side good guys so good luck guys and good job on that hopefully it'll be really good next game is runescape mobile redesigned

from the pc version including revamp for iap the game has apparently been in soft launch for a while has gained about 2.1 million installs so far but the game is expected to launch later this summer and finally greena it opened pre-registrations for free fire max in mina and according to the arena website quote get the next level experience quality graphics and lots of new features only in free fire max second update from me is since this is t-minus two episodes for me i gotta pimp all my [ __ ] so lila games the mobile game studio that i'm part of is hiring we're building a free-to-play shooter with a very ambitious and aggressive design based in bangalore india already putting a really strong team together in our venture backed by bitcraft and galaxy interactive anyway we're looking for three key roles first systems and economy designer this has been a [ __ ] to find like really

really difficult to find this role i know that pain i know that pain yeah they are unicorns yeah second senior lead unity client developers and third in art director and finally just want to shout out again super stonk brothers investment podcast from from myself and co-host uh my buddy steve pelly from pixelberry lincoln show notes and final update is uh we want i want to announce the new show host eric seufert who will be starting next week right is is he joining next week or the week after next year i guess it depends on joe yeah so we'll we'll do like a group thing next week and then uh and yeah it should be should be good all right rolling into news all right i think i have the first one so ea announced its battlefield game by the way i like these notes so jk in your notes it says on a big like gotta pimp my [ __ ] [Music] it's just funny anyways

so he announced it's the new battlefield game so this is the biggest team ever on a battlefield game for console and pc they got dice.com dice la criterion uh studio from it's called gothenburg okay it's a different name in english than it is in in swedish it's yeah anyway the different thing uh so and a part of this huge battlefield conglomerate a new battlefield mobile game is coming in 2022. so after years of prototyping industrial toys working closely with dice are developing a completely new battlefield game bringing all out warfare to smart force and tablets in 2022 and no this is not a cross-platform experience this is a standalone game so okay so this is a massive push from ea to in a way reinvigorate the battlefield franchise because battlefield 5 was a miss i don't have the exact sales numbers here but i looked at

them earlier today there were significantly lower compared to the previous battlefields and significantly lower to the call of duty franchise and as battlefield has you know taken its hit taking its licking because that game came out in 2018 call of duty the main rival has been doing great so they got warzone on pc just super high player score you know meta score was was it was an average but player score is super high a lot of players just everybody enjoying this game call of duty mobile crushing it i think civil war was at an okay level you guys know it the best i kind of look at the metacritic and sales numbers it doesn't seem to be you know as big as those two um but i'm not here to talk about the the console stuff that's your business i'm here more about talk about battlefield mobile so this game is made by industrial toys and it's a developer in pasadena their previous games from industrial toys have been morningstar i think that launches sometimes 2013 or

14. it doesn't exist in the app store anymore but they also launched midnight star that was 2015 and midnight star renegade which was the last game and that launched in 2016. so they had this graphical novel that supported the franchise and they were really building a story really building this this um uh morning star sort of a halo it was it was super cool they were building a world around it but sadly the results really didn't follow from this type of a launch strategy so their last game and all the games pretty much did the same but the last game which was midnight star renegade 2016 did only 250 000 installs and just about 10k in revenue and that's lifetime and in 2018 a couple of years afterwards it was acquired by ea so based on you know industrial toys success or lack of it and you know the games look good and the novel and everything this acquisition makes little sense but when you start looking more deeply into industrial toys you understand this

company is headed by alexander seropian he's a founder and ceo of bungie and during his time they make myth marathon halo so you know clearly clearly a person heading a team that that know what they're doing even though they had a couple of myths on mobile so let's talk about battlefields chances on mobile they have some challenges and they have plenty opportunities when it comes to challenges it's of course direct competition we've got call of duty mobile just you know just eating the the audience you got pubg huge and you got garina which is really taking a lot of these third tier countries like the brazil's and southeast asia and so forth in addition you have new competition coming in of course apex jk mentioned just recently and as well the new pubg game that is coming out so plenty of competition the second challenge is the content treadmill that all these games are in so how does a studio in pasadena stack up against these chinese studios they're making currently the pub g's and the

apex legends how can they keep up with all that content you have to produce and that's going to be of course the challenge but there's plenty of opportunities so ea hasn't been on the cutting edge of user acquisition since um well really in a long time but with idfa deprecating and big ipv i think these are the major equalizers that allow ea's kind of typical uh brand driven strategy to to promote these games and really hit top of the download charge we saw this with with call of duty mobile and i mean it came from activision that really hadn't launched big mobile game ever before and they were able to i think break all the wreckage with that game the second opportunity here is that shooter is highly growing genre so in 2020 last year revenues for shooters grew by 38 in the west year over year and installs clocked at 2.7 billion and that was up by 31 compared to 2019 and later this week we're going to

release a podcast episode with a phd who worked on facebook's marketing report and in this marketing growth report it really underlies the new players on mobile are coming as a predominantly core gamers and the genre that they're most interested in isn't shooters so this definitely adds to the value of this type of a big shooter ip coming to mobile but as i said a lot of competition a lot of existing couple of competition a lot of new competition and how they're gonna be able to keep up with the content treadmill is i think gonna be the biggest challenges to overcome what do you guys think you know i met with these guys when i was at caban you know with mr petrovic um they seemed like a really good team and lots of bungee people uh and at the time i thought they were they're basically ahead of their time because uh you know mobile shooters just did not do well at all back then um and they've been focusing on the shooter genre for obviously for i think their entire career as it seems

uh but clearly we see a lot more success over the last few years with pub g call of duty and green et cetera but i agree with you i think the biggest challenge is competing with the content treadmill that is teami and pubg and and well what was fortnite and garina um i and generally speaking i imagine that the apex product is probably going to be better right or you know because this team is more experienced with building this type of shooter um but you know the fact is like the monetization mechanics have been relatively standardized with these cosmetic economies battlefield may get an audience if it's a decent game but it's going to be come down to obviously the overall quality of the game which we'll see and then the content support and the quality of that support i imagine um we'll see what they can do but my expectations are relatively low for battlefield and and higher for apex uh even though i think apex is going to be a challenge given the twitch-based nature of their gameplay but i think they're making

modifications to fix that so we shall see but of course i will bow down to adam telford's genius and brilliance because obviously i don't know what i'm talking about so i feel really salty today wow i wrote this really nice note for you and then you just [ __ ] written me a new one you know i didn't i just read your notes so that's nice at least i i i get to hear it so that's nice continue but but i do get to make fun of miska now uh yeah well we need to play it you need to play more pc console right like there is no game called call of duty civil war call of duty never went to the civil war it's cold that would be the worst worship ever but that is actually the game they should make that you know america that wasn't that right wait that was not the right email wait it's like what is it like boom and then you're like yeah you got to use the right stick to bring it in push down all right moving on

um but yes no i completely agree with you actually you you said it exactly how i would right ea internal competing with timmy lightspeed garina makes no sense we've said this so many times in this podcast um the the shooter market is not one that you can just waltz into and assume that you can compete with these guys on live content so yeah i completely agree apex has a better shot at this um but even still they're still very unlikely to surpass cod pubg and free fire in the west in their first year just because it just takes a lot of time you you remember the initial predictions that we all put together for cod right at launch and just how long it took for them to get their rpi in shape right i knew that they're going to get there uh so he said a billion dollars your mouth mishka you didn't know jack's [ __ ] i was hyped on that game hey i got a question regarding this game so um how do you think eas is publishing

this because they have apex coming out of you know coming next year and they have this game so two major shooters on mobile coming at the same time i think apex is coming out late this year and battlefield's coming out late next year okay right i i think um yeah i think their battlefield's pretty far off i don't know why they actually frankly i don't know why they i guess they announced it with with the uh announcement of the new battlefield or some more details around the new battlefield for console yeah yeah and plus like if apex does do really well then they'll just give more time to battlefield right and i do have ea has a lot of content studios like they have one i'm almost said here not here in one in europe and romania i think that's a big studio where they do a lot of content so there's definitely ways to leverage but at the same time romania is extremely far away from pasadena like it's it's almost like on a different planet anyways so you know good luck to them uh i i

think i've actually met with the uh with with the industrial toys team and uh connected with that with alex to to join the podcast a little bit later so curious to hear what they're making and and how is it going because i'm a huge fan especially myth was uh was a massive game you know i was in love with that game and was in love in halo so i'm definitely rooting for them anyway myth what what game yeah yeah kind of like a strategy game like they had these dwarfs all right come on man are you really making a shooter like what does that have to do with building a shooter making myth dude myth was like a cd-rom game in the 80s dude so what i loved it what i can't do i have to love all the shoot like only like i loved haters in reference to what they're doing now it has no connection whatsoever dude it's just they have they have the poster of that game in the studio and i was like i love

that game so can we can we move on please all right next news article so fortnite's mastermind goes to battle with apple and the wall street journal is reporting on the current battle waging between epic and apple so the article recaps the situation which i'm sure most of us are all pretty aware of but then fills in a lot of interesting details and some of the backstory about tim sweeney's fight to get an alternative app store on ios so the wall street journal notes that a resolution may also be drawing near starting may 3rd the dispute goes back on trial before federal judge yvonne gonzalez rogers ygr to get fortnight back on ios and i just wanted to highlight some interesting parts from the article and would definitely encourage folks to to check it out if you're not familiar with the situation but first you know sony actually internally debated its position initially but since then sony has as many of you know invested twice into epic

most recently for around 200 million at a 28.7 billion valuation apparently according to wall street journal sweeney played hardball with sony and actually sony felt they got backed into a corner with respect to apple and were strong-armed into allowing cross play across game consoles so it's interesting to see the tactics that were being employed and just how strong epic was with respect to both sony and with apple and according to wall street journal mike schmidt a head of apple games bd for app store at that time gave highly prefer preferential treatment to epic in which apple provided quote all hands on deck treatment to address apple's non-stop ass which frequently involved middle of the night calls and texts demanding short turnaround further according to schmidt he said epic employees had told him apple represented just seven percent of its revenue further that quote on a variety of occasions epic personnel have told me that if apple did not comply with its demands epic would simply terminate its

relationship with apple and remove its games off the ios platform uh next point is that epic co-founder mark rain predicted there was a greater than 50 percent chance apple would immediately remove fortnite from its platforms according to an epic employee deposition cited in court records and that quote they may also sue us to make an example which kind of shows that this was highly premeditated and that epic did scenario plan a lot of this stuff and behind the scenes epic's project liberty team met regularly regularly and devised a way to present their plan to a judge and the public and this team included as many as actually 200 epic staffers outside lawyers and apr advisor finally wall street journal notes that by early 2020 fortnight was showing signs of aging and according to center tower fortnite had fallen in q1 of 2020 to 70 million in revenue from a peak of 180 million in q3 of 2018 but just to be clear epic disputes these

numbers my take on this is that we've already talked a lot about about this before but from the sound of how everything played out this was as i mentioned it does seem like it was clearly premeditated carefully planned out in the end my take is that tim sweeney isn't interested in one-off games he's completely focused on platforms and so when you see this strategy against and also their strategy against epic game store it makes our strategy make a lot more sense in that you know tim sweeney wants to own platforms not just games he's probably seen how games are successful and and then kind of wane and so clearly owning the platform or the store is much more valuable than owning games what do you guys think we need to get the lawyers back i want to know i want to get an update on what this this case is all about uh these days and where it's going and where it's likely to end

i think i think we're kind of waiting for this case to be over so that we actually can see what epic is actually doing because i'm just getting all kinds of mixed messages about what what they're planning on doing um so anyway i it's interesting i don't know i i don't have i think this is the like we could do a whole podcast on on this thing you know and then you know like sort it through so i don't know we need we need lawyers in order to do that yeah experts at this yeah to know what's gonna happen but it's nice to know that they make seven percent of the revenue from ios that's a nice number like at the end of the episode just too complicated all right moving on now this is gonna be a long one so buckle up and if you get bored just just hits pause and this is not meant to be a rant it's just meant to be a thought piece right about what's going on [Laughter] [Music] so the article it's not an article was actually press release a new leadership

for overwatch so jeff kaplan is leaving blizzard and you know the real headline here is i don't think blizzard is ever or blizzard is never in quotes going to be a successful software as a service that is kind of the the the line i want to like reinvigorate here um and i want to get you i want to want you guys to understand why i think this right and and what i think is going to likely transpire and this is ironic because they were the original software as a service were world of warcraft right world of warcraft is was the original one right um but transitioning to a free to play software as a service is going to be a challenge all right so let me begin jeff kaplan jeff kaplan leaving was really the impetus for me right for some reason this guy feels like the last straw and so what i did was i put together a list of all the people that have left blizzard and i was going to quote that on the on the show and i'm not going to do that but morheim frank pierce metzen metzen and the hearthstone team

those guys bailing was pretty traumatic i think for blizzard but for some reason jeff kaplan just is is it just feels like the end of days for blizzard you know when someone like him is actually leaving and i do expect a huge excess of people leaving blizzard after jeff leaves because when people like jeff leave it gives the the the okay the permission for others to jump ship right so and my understanding that jeff was actually going to stick around till the end of overwatch 2 right that was kind of like the word on the street as joseph would say but my guess is that the feature requirements the feature creep activision pushing pushing pushing probably extended the development outside of next year and so he basically had enough and bail that's kind of my my my expectation so you don't if anybody expects overwatch 2 to come out next year i think you're going to be disappointed so we will see or actually on the flip side now that i think about it they may have like pulled back on is their main trying to push it out next year so the game's not going to be that good either one not a good situation for overwatch too just generally speaking so

and then i also don't think that jay allen's going to stick around after his contract because i think he's he's losing hair and and you know getting wrinkles and people like tom chilton and louis baraga who are blue sprague is running diablo and i don't know what children's doing but i don't think these guys stick around that much longer anyway but let me back up a bit like i i just wanna i just wanna go through my thought process here because i think i've been very inconsistent on this these points and i just wanna be clear on the why i think this okay i'm very lucky at what i do right because i get to talk to really smart people [ __ ] i talk to adam telfer every goddamn week you know and he eats shits and sleeps freaking free to play modernization [ __ ] awesome right chris petrovic boiled the ocean for [ __ ] a decade and understanding all these game companies kimberly pointer who like basically was one of the pioneers of performance marketing at kabam and then mishka well i actually don't know what mishka is really an expert in but mishka right i talk to mushka right but i get to talk to all these experts gaming and get a deep understanding of what the [ __ ] is going on in this

industry but on the flip side i talked to investors and so this is why it's like the jekyll and hyde thing right and more specifically hedge fund and portfolio managers that are that that cover this industry but they also cover like 100 other companies right so one step they can be talking about free to play monetization for gta and the next they're talking about like chip yields for [ __ ] semi-conductor companies right so they provide you know insane they have insane amounts of information they're coming at them constantly across all segments of technology right and and they're very proprietary data and that's why i never advise anybody to trade in stocks because these guys have such big advantage to everyone else but anyway that's a whole other podcast and a whole discussion so the point is these guys are super smart i mean really smart right they have a very high understanding of things at the high level and i was talking to this client a prospective client actually and you can tell he's really smart and he really understands his games and um but and i if i were to be honest i think he talked listen to bobby kotec a little bit too much but we spent an hour on the phone about

45 minutes was discussing this issue with blizzard right can they become a software as a service studio right and you know can they build or and can they build the successful mobile games and the free to play mechanics to their existing franchises like that was kind of the other the whole point of this is i get two sides of the same coin constantly right and my job fundamentally is to translate one into the other right and that that's what i did but i think on this point i'm a little bit wishy-washy i was a little bit back and forth because i i and so that's why i was trying to crystallize my idea about why i think blizzard will never be a successful free-to-play company um so anyway let's okay all right so on the podcast i know that i've been talking on both sides of my mouth about this issue right on the one hand i criticize companies like sony who have no capability of building software as a service on the other hand i lambast activision and ea for trying to change bioware and blizzard into that into that fold right i criticized

supercell and king for how they manage their growth despite being the best companies in the business and so i thought it would just kind of break down blizzard and and explain why they will never become a free-to-play company and i i use never in quotes because i think ultimately they will but it's going to take an entire time a huge time and i think when you say never it's a great clickbait um so there are four big themes culture team structure ip and monetization design these are the four things that i was thinking about when it comes to this let's get the easy ones out of the way ip blizzard definitely has the ip fit i mean there's there's a dozen turn-based rpg makers out there that could build a billion dollar franchise with their their ip right no doubt right between diablo warcraft starcraft overwatch hearthstone this is not an issue compare this to nintendo which really does not have any ips that fit a certain live service model or something like bioware where their content is not well suited at all like dragon age and mass effect mass effect maybe a little bit but they're all focuses on narrative and

exploration so this is not an issue for blizzard right this doesn't mean it's easy this just means that blizzard has definitely has good fit for ip monetization i think the models are out there like we talked about the season pass model we talked about this you know monetizing cosmetic economies with with the huge install base like i think this is it's out there right i think you know there could be a big sticking point for some old school blizzard people about monetization design but you know like loot boxes and energy systems may be off the table to some degree which limits their upside and their potential but i think they can they can figure it out right they're not going to institute play-to-win mechanics most likely which limits things but they can't build games that that uh that make money given the current monetization design but i think when things start to fall apart is team structure and and this is where you know i i've never worked at blizzard but this is from what i hear they have like five or six teams that focus on certain ips like world of warcraft diablo hearthstone mobile project teams and overwatch right

vicarious visions i think took over the starcraft team is what i understand but anyway this this structure makes sense for premium content but i think it doesn't make any sense for uh for free to play right what i think they should have done is build completely new teams that focus on mobile or focus on free to play and let the people that build the old style game stay still build the old style games right um the challenge is they have these lifetime premium premium content makers that are trying to build free to play content right and that's impossible like they don't have the same mindset and and even if the execs are on board the staff is not into the idea of building free free-to-play models and don't understand how free-to-play works so they're not really un comfortable the business model so alignment with the teams is creating all kinds of division frustrations and ultimately what we're seeing right now is delays and i think that's a huge problem right now right world of warcraft team is cranking it out because they're doing what they've always done overwatch diablo are spinning they

shuttered the starcraft team the hearthstone team just all left and now is in complete disarray right it seems like all the it seems like some of the mobile teams may have some autonomy but these lead designers that come from traditional development move to mobile which just seems like a complete mismatch from the get-go right and in some cases the design ideas weren't taken up and so some of them left rather than sticking around and moving back to older projects so i think this is where things start to fall apart as a team structure but culture is the biggest thing and this is what i have talked about before is that the culture around bread around premium product just does not work for free to play how many times did moreheim say they would never do microtransactions you know similar to nintendo their whole mantra of the company's been last 25 years has been creative integrity quality first and consumer first games are not done until they're done you know these kind of notions this is almost the opposite of the spectrum of what free to play is right so even if you convert the leadership and

and and they're converted on what what needs to be done how can you cascade this to the broader organization which came to blizzard because of this mantra and this culture so in short you can't it's an impossible situation and this is kind of the intense you know the title of this whole idea is that blizzard is never going to be a successful software as a service company because you cannot force this down their throats the way activision is doing and you're losing all the talent that made blizzard what it is and this creates a situation we are now right all the games are delayed or continually in development hell you have creative teams trying to put together a third person diablo game which goes against the heart of the ip you know like you don't do that right overwatch which was a very successful game driven by into the dirt by becoming an esport like bringing esport in the mix never made sense because it was the worst esport game ever right it doesn't make sense as an esport it never did right but this was what was forced from activision you have teams spinning on mobile with no end in sight the diablo immortal team diablo mortal itself is being reinvented in the image of the old blizzard games

rather than maintaining the design that nettie's does best you know like why would you even do that right so i think we are seeing in real time what i've been talking about for the last like four years is that the dismantling of one of the most creative game teams in the industry right i don't think delivery blizzard is ever going to be create to be successful as offers of service because by the time they figure it out it won't be blizzard anymore right and that's the kind of the whole point they it would they will get there but it won't be blizzard it'll be something else and and that's what's so sad and that's why i think jeff kaplan in general kind of is like the exclamation point of of of what where blizzard is headed and where what blizzard has become and it's very very sad for me and i think sad for a lot of other people and i'm actually surprised that this has not gotten more attention from from press like it seems maybe they're just so fatigued by all the discussion here or all these people leaving that no one's even covering this anymore so anyway that's my long kind of long-winded description of what i think the situation is and why why i don't think blizzard is

going to be blizzard anymore and i'm very sad but if if you were codec right what would you be doing with the assets you have at blizzard would you be doing the same thing doing this slow transition or would you do what ea did with bioware which is basically acknowledging that that's the way that they're always going to be and just push those ips towards premium only i think i would i think i would do a a few different things i would i would i would restructure blizzard into the you know three teams you know three or four teams that focus on what they do best like building world of warcraft you know building new ip and then you know supporting building diablo maybe right but building it the way they want to build it like maintaining that culture and those creative visionaries and and keeping those them whole but to leverage those ips into a free to play service you build completely separate teams you do acquisitions right you acquire a team

that knows how to do uh you know rpgs right and build a diablo as a service or build warcraft as a service like you just basically take it out of that and and put it in teams that that are built to build that and and and completely a build because that that eliminates the culture issue right um but i guess the difference that they have right now right just just to keep prodding you on this so you have the internal teams you say you're going to keep doing what you've always been doing very very well so you continue to build a diablo you continue to build at starcraft all those amazing ips but they're very much a premium game right obviously that goes the same way that bioware is now now you say i'm going to take all your ips and i'm going to hand it over to teams and give them complete creative control to be able to build the free-to-play service right likely that's what kodak tried with immortals right like i'm speculating here but the fact that nedis was there and then eventually got to a point where now

blizzard is almost driving that project which again i i think has been covered in articles to make sure my data source is there right maybe activision tried that and that could have caused talent attrition anyways right like you think of kaplan or any of these morheim if they heard that activision was just grabbing their ip and sending it off to you know mobile free to play teams without any overlook from them um they would probably not take that well so no no but that's well i i think that's a much easier way of managing this than trying to force it down the throat of people that don't want to agree that want to be creative right and so no and actually you know that strap that was a strategy i would have done is like give it to nettie's like this is exactly the strategy i would have done but instead now they're trying to out over manage it is what i'm guessing and i i i talk whatever i think they should do what they did with diablo like that's smart right oh give it to neddy's they know exactly what they're doing with this type of game if they're going to

make if this is going to work they're going to make it work now there's all kinds of other issues here i don't want to go too deep into the design thing we've talked about this in the podcast before but that's the strategy i would have done like take the same the way they did with call of duty and and teami right right like you don't you think the call of duty team at treyarch or or um um sorry i'm like yeah raven do you think any of those guys could have created the mobile game no [ __ ] way no [ __ ] ways that would never have happened right so that's the right that's what i would do is just basically either build it or or license it or or co-partner or even co-dev whatever but don't push it down on blizzard right and and so like i guess i don't again i've already talked enough about this but like i again i'm on both sides here right i know bobby what bobby's doing is smartest for the shareholders but there's got to be a more uh eloquent way and a more uh pl uh um blizzard friendly way or you know talent-friendly way to do it and and and it's just

it's just it's it's horrific right horrific it's an incredible insanely difficult situation both activision and blizzard right like this is obviously where they need to take those ips yes but they know any way of doing that is just going to cause such talent attrition because that's how the company was formed right i you're right it is an impossible situation and and i and i but i just i i just want to be clear on my point and as to why i'm so schizophrenic about this is because i i do see both sides um and then maybe i'm a little bit closer to blizzard because i just i'm a huge fan and it's just really sad to see um but we'll see and then you know like four or five years from now when they start actually you know change the cultures change and basically everyone who was you know built that company is gone then maybe they'll start to execute but i guess my biggest point is the reason that i think this is such a risk is because we're seeing the impact of what to the company right now right everything's being delayed constantly delay delay delay delay delay and then the design is questionable for overwatch too we'll see what happens with the immortal

but that doesn't seem to be on track i don't know what's going on with the other mobile projects i hear that they're looking good but my understanding is that i don't know we'll see about that the only thing that's working is world of warcraft right because it's the same [ __ ] team playing building the same game you know over and over again so i'm exhausted now it's an interesting situation because i think kind of zynga went to something similar but a little bit you know different because there was the the first iteration of zing and of course that was the free-to-play maker but but they had their own strategy of doing things and then the turmoil started the decline and then the the dometric era and then the pincus came back and only after frank jubo took over they they were able to to kind of turn around but even in this turnaround they haven't shipped their own games they kind of you know went on the acquisition spree and leveraged their internal capabilities so looking at that as one of the examples of a turnaround where you have us a way of working and you're trying to reinvent yourself i don't think blizzard has the same type

of um same type of a tool set to reinvent themselves you know they can't just start acquiring studios or i mean they could to you know set up a bunch of blizzard studios and then kind of like let them do the blizzard games rather than do them internally because it seems like they're locked to a certain way of making games that might not be the best for all kinds of you know modern games i i don't know just yeah i think that this issue in terms of i think there's two things that probably somebody should deep dive into sometime in the future which is the difference between and i've talked about it before too like the different in skill set in terms of building new games versus live operating games and then to your point eric about team structure i don't think enough execs especially at the at the hd companies understand that in terms of the the structure of a team for a live ops type of game the workflows the way that these teams should operate are is

fundamentally different i think that's just not well understood enough in the industry especially by execs so having somebody kind of speak to that and deep dive on that stuff and what the differences are and why one approach kind of sucks relative to another would probably be good for somebody to cover at some point in the future yep i guess you know you know we'll we'll see what happens uh you know i'm a little sad i guess i'm just sad jeff kaplan i don't know i don't know this guy i've never met any of these guys you know but you just hear him he's beloved in the community i don't know medicine was that way too you know i mean moreheim is one thing but i don't know do you think they'll all just go to dreamhaven yeah i mean i think medicine's doing some kind of like uh tabletop or or like he's got some d d thing going on or something right yeah i don't know i don't i have no idea i'm retirement i'm sure he's made his money i think he got burnt out frankly with him but i i

he he left a little bit earlier um no i think kaplan joins i think kaplan likely joins uh morheim and creates another team there and they're like i think they're not that would be number four team they're they're just gonna take everybody yeah but and then like all of those teams are all gonna be building premium games yeah let's see what so the irony now i'm talking at both sides of my mouth so the the moreheim one of the teams is gonna the starcraft guys are all gonna be building another real-time strategy game like a really real-time strategy game in this day and age i don't know dude but um real-time strategies where it's at man it's it's it's not lack of demand it's like a product oh you are so out of your goddamn mind dude wait what are we in the 90s again dude no one's real time so where wait hold on real time strategy games right now is [ __ ] mobas dude on pc yeah like the audience for strategy games is moba he's talking about frosty i

would say there would be an evolution of moba that would take it closer to real time strategy that could be a really interesting yeah i do think that frost giant i mean i'm excited to see what they come up with but i don't know if they do it or not but i do think that more on the resource management side and that type of game i i think it'll come back at some point some somebody will figure it out oh we will see but anyway anyone have any comments about my baloney please uh reach out because i i do like love the feedback and tell me tell me where i'm wrong right all right guys i think that's it catch y'all later bye live like share everything [Applause] [Music] [Music]

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