TWIG #278 The AAA Studio Model is Dead??? And who are the BIG Gaming VC Funds good for?

[Music] hello and welcome to Twig 278 where we read and distill all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to welcome everyone I'm your host Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno and today we have Philip black game Economist at game eon Consulting hey hey Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting Group and sick as a dog I am my whole family is sick traveling all over this great wide world but I'm powering through the travel plague has hit you and then Mishka katov pope of deconstructor of fun Church uh thank you so much for the introduction and hey amen amen hallelujah

all right here's what we're going to cover today Crest is going to recount why he's sick cuz he was in London uh is the triaa game Studio dead there were a few articles that we want to debate should there be tipping in games and our new fake segment is show reviews because trans media is real this week let's do Fallout Phil why don't you kick us off uh I'm I'm a couple episodes into the Fallout TV show this is one of the most authentic and best video game adaptions I've seen they got the world right and if you don't know this is by Jonathan Nolan who is the brother of Christopher Nolan of course the director of The Dark Knight Rises in addition to a Litany of other successes he also redeemed himself for Westworld he's the creator of Westworld too and if you know anything about Westworld that went off a hill you know I think this is just an embarrassment to Halo in that piece of [ __ ] TV show um just I'm just sad I'm just sad to see Halo uh just trash Source material compared to this um and now Hal Halo has fallen even lower in my

books but but has anyone seen this dude I [ __ ] Bing binge watch this [ __ ] till my eyes bleed I was like watching this on the plane to and from London I was crazy absolutely crazy but by the way Halo wasn't all that bad dude I think it lived up to the my expectations of Halo I mean what do you expect from a Halo I guess whatever anyway season 2 was a little bit better I don't know really what happened at the end but it was better that's how low bases work and low expectations you can always succeed them I actually thought the Fallout thing was really really good a good story with really great acting just in general like everyone was kind of believable some really memorable characters um I'm not really into anything to do with Fallout lore or or I have nothing no idea what that's all about there was a lot of noise from people out there that were not too happy or disappointed about how true to the uh lore they were but I I say get over it I thought the story was good um and I

think they did a great job and it was it was really entertaining and I can't wait till the next season so I'm I'm hooked I've not seen it but really want to uh I was kind of on Shogun so now I got to kick over to to f if you haven't seen Shogun please the best Shogun it's so amazing anyway according to Matt piscatella from you know cirana and NPD uh their player engagement tracker Fallout 76 is currently seeing its highest engagement rate on Xbox series consoles daily percentage of active XPS player playing since October 2022 trans media is a thing Mishka come on all right Phil what else you got no Mishka would you like to take a [ __ ] on this or should go I I'm not going to take a [ __ ] on it but it's the same thing that that happened with the Cyber punk I think it was cyber punk anyways so what I'm trying to get at is that the base levels are so low with Fallout to my knowledge because there haven't been a new game in a while then whenever

there's an interest Rising again and people are playing these games once again then the jump is significant but it's just a short spike and it it goes back down I think we've seen this with Last of Us I think we've seen it with few other games and when it comes to trans media like if if this was a thing which it might be I might be totally wrong most likely I am then they're launching games that have nothing to do with their catalog and just like Hades came out right now I don't know maybe we should cover Netflix games I was just thinking about trans media and this part there's a total lack of marginal analysis when it's come to this and it's really bothered me so remember there was an 80% discount on all of these games so there's normal price elasticity effects here so we first of all have to take away some attribution due to price elasticity effects and even if you look at the unit increase in sales even if we give 100% attribution across the portfolio so not just the HD titles but also fallout shelter is up as well you know based on some back of the envelope math I did you know maybe we're talking about a 5 million bump and that's being extremely generous and remember there's

there's other effects here it's not just the sale but it was featured on the store steam page there's a bunch of other effects that are happening here but even if we gave 100% attribution to this and we did some back in the envelope math on Revenue maybe $5 million in incremental revenue and if that is the case you need to factor in how expensive this TV show was to make and how expensive the marketing budget is so it looked like it was about $150 million to make Fallout season one maybe we double that for marketing so we're looking at a $300 million budget okay 5% on of that I mean what 3% less than 3% I mean it's it's peanuts in the p&l so like if this is the best trans media has to offer it's been a complete and utter disaster and the other thing that I find interesting here is this never goes the other way so whenever we see these TV shows come out there's always this celebration of game numbers going up but when for instance Spider-Man came out no one was talking about like the Netflix Spider-Man streaming numbers or dvd sales so it seems to only go in One Direction and it's because we still have this [ __ ] inferiority complex in this industry that Hol hwood is like the seal

of approval when Holly does well it's a validation of who we are and we need to get away from this [ __ ] and we need to be strong independent game makers who don't who don't need no Los Angeles that's all I have to say on the matter oh my God I didn't expect this to all right we're gonna have to have a whole another show on this because don't agree I couldn't I couldn't have said it any better pH I 100% agree the incremental revenue generated from this [ __ ] is so my stuts that it doesn't [ __ ] matter at all when you're selling something for five bucks or six bucks who gives a [ __ ] [ __ ] how much like percentage increase it is month over month because of the movie or television show say stop brand awareness though brand awareness you can't measure it there's different people paying for things too and then you have not just the games you have other lines of business and other consumer products Prime paid for the show Prime paid for the marketing not the developer and so the developer is just getting you know a halo effect pun intended as a result of the IP being bigger it extends the length of the IP okay anyway we we all

disagree and that's fine I I actually agree with what Jen said as well so there's like a long-term game there as well so longterm yeah like it it builds the franchise it builds a franchise but like it's not but but it's not a financial windfall it's a basically a quote unquote halo effect for the entire franchise to make it bigger and people maybe likely will again tune into the next Fallout of course the fall next Fallout game is like [ __ ] decade away because they're working on Elder Scrolls right now so like exactly how is this Halo G to help Fallout right even in the in the medium term you know that part is a [ __ ] up right like so you should this is what franchise planning is and you should have effectively schedule out the content that builds the world and then the content supporting the world should be closely aligned in timing this is one of my jobs when I was at Disney is to say okay for Power Rangers or Toy Story or some of these like what do you do in the world for content and then how do you extend that into consumer products or other experiences so that you know

you've got the big burst and then you've got the tail that leverages all of those different things and I agree it seems like the timing of this probably didn't align well to to really make use of that all right let's move on we're going to shill now CU we're still at the beginning of the show most important part of the show The shill oh yeah here we go there was a great write up by Ken Landon in the deconstructor of fun newsletter by the way we have a newsletter everybody and we still have a Blog so please go check out Legends of mushrooms this Friday Ken Laura and I are going to record a product Deep dive so it'll probably be on YouTube uh late next week and CR I'm dying to hear about your London Adventures but I think Mishka wants to shill some more first yeah yeah like we can't leave it with one shill so before CR starts talking about his fan boys and fan girls in London uh I wanted to mention two podcasts that dropped this week so earlier in this week we had an at monetization Trends podcast with qu's John Wright and Google's Ross Brockman

uh this was sort of a continuation of the discussions we had in Felix back in the uh the earlier part of this year or was it the end of 2023 either or but a lot about ammonization and things are not you know as great as they were before maybe so listen to that and then we had uh Chris related podcast uh with geram Turk of Laton Ventures so this is something we're recorded at GDC it's a Turkish delight if you will a very istan bullish conversation so this is a new fund out of Istanbul exporting the knoow of the Turkish gaming scene abroad so both investing in Turkey as well as in the uh the companies outside turkey so very interesting conversation with Gham dude gerk's the boss dud raised 35 freaking million dollars it's more than that already who's done that dude it's more than that play Ventures like none of those guys have done that [ __ ] right yeah I I think I can say the supercell is their LP as well so they got some really good companies investing so it's a it's a rare opportunity to invest into

a fund operating out of turkey goram's an animal all right London Venture Partners uh so I was invited to the London Adventure event evidently they do it yearly I think last year it was in Lisbon this year it was in London what was really cool it coincided with the baftas which is the awards ceremony for uh gaming in London um and it was actually hosted at the bafta building in London near padil for those those that are unfamiliar lvp kind of was one of the OG gaming Venture Capital firms founded Sorry by David Gardner uh of EA Fame David Key and Paul Hayden um some of the notable Investments are supercell Unity playfish which was acquired by EA and natural motion which was acquired by Zinga actually I I don't want to speak out of turd but those were those deals were really interesting back in the day kind of the uh OG EA Mafia uh selling companies to each other that's really interesting but basically it's a yearly

conference that they do I think a lot of these VC firms do that where they have the LPS there what I didn't know about them was that the majority of their LPS are actually strategics or or companies that are in the industry so it's it is more of a who's who of the industry that's invested in their firm and and that it's a little bit different than bigcraft again the guest list was relatively really actually really impressive Gina Google Hasbro 10cent wargaming Etc and guess who was there Frank jbo was there the CD project guys were there uh the founders uh Lars from embracer was there and generally I do not go to these type of conferences for one simple reason one is that senior executives are PR trained and they don't tell you jack [ __ ] right so it doesn't help me or my business generally speaking but to be clear I'm rarely invited to these type of events so there's that but nonetheless there was some really interesting uh folks there unfortunately I did miss Lara's presentation because I was hanging out with the wife the second day anyway a newo gave another presentation on the

current state of gaming which I really thought was good kind of a good wakeup call for the exacts in the room my panel of course was the best of course there actual game makers talking about AI of course right and so I think it it it went over reasonably well but I'll be honest I came away from the conference which was kind of an AI geared conference I came a little less bullish on AI than I was going into it um only because like you know the jargon and acronym was like the primary way of communicating about this opportunity versus like the consumer value prop you know and I get worried you know sounds feels like a lot like more like blockchain uh but not nearly as bad I suppose but I still feel there were kind of less practical use cases and more technology people talking technology which is not as interesting but nonetheless it was a great event hopefully we'll get back get invited again I don't think I insulted too many people but I was pretty Frank up there so to speak speaking of Frank

did he like see you and run the other direction I'll be honest I wasn't feeling a lot of love but uh you know he's a busy [Laughter] man he don't give a [ __ ] dude at the end day you guys counting as Millions you know like what does he care I do really want to listen to the presentation for Lars I think the one thing that I did get feedback on from other people was that he was very humble you know it's like he got up there and he said the most obvious thing in the world it's like it's far easier to buy companies than sell companies okay Point honestly I'm really glad that I wasn't there for it because I would have been so hardpressed not to say and ask a very inappropriate question and that question would be what the [ __ ] did you think was gonna happen you know like I mean how is this ever possibly gonna be successful but of course luckily I did not get the chance to uh put my big foot in my mouth um but I can say it here but

not in there so there you go you said something interesting about Ai and I struggle with it as well is because so much of it is very Tech heavy they need like a product marketer who understands the tech to then turn it into to usable cons either consumer language or internal game development language that helps people really understand what they're trying to do because I I am struggling in the same way people from the outside ask me oh how was a AI helping with games and I'm like I don't know I I 100% agree nothing is worse than blockchain like you go like one layer deep and dude you are in the [ __ ] Tech mck you know like it is it is bad and I you know maybe I'm a half a [ __ ] I'll admit but like it's just bad I think AI is a little bit easier to understand because there's certain you're actually executing certain things with AI in order to help facilitate development but it's still they spent again spent more time on the technology side and not they just got to get rid of

the word AI in general and I think you've said this before on on on how to describe it just say they're building a better game yeah just just talk about the benefit not about using all of the jargon 100% 100% there's so many pitches that I've gone through which is like there's no value statement it's just like we're doing this and you're like why and they're like because because we can just okay interesting all right well next year let's all go because this sounded like a lot of fun and we could go in the we could be the peanut gallery and and Heckle everyone all right Corrections maybe not a correction but Mishka hold up I thought you were going to talk about supercells web stores last week so last week in the episode we we talked about web stores and we threw a lot of numbers of like how much the web stores are making and of course we've heard of multiple different companies saying that some of their top titles make up to 50% in revenue from web stores now when we discussed and I was

like hey we could look at supercell's revenues because those are public compare them to the the sensor Tower or dat AI revenues and maybe see some kind of a Delta that's a bad indication but those are the only numbers that we're working with so I went that I did this this quick research so according to censor Tower supercell's revenues were 1.8 billion and this is roughly the same that they actually reported so it was a surprisingly accurate number on sensor Tower and well of course it's accurate with the with the official statements so we don't really know what the part of web store revenues are but according to this it might not be that significant we also know that supercell doesn't really have ad Revenue I think there's some integration with Heyday still but none of the other games have any AD Revenue So based on this very superficial research the uh the web store revenues are not that significant but again we're comparing sensor Tower data to super sales official Revenue numbers and so so might be a bad research but I don't have

any other data to Bu from look actually there's two things I want to talk about it was painful listening to podcast last week I I hate not being here to like counteract your nonsense but like at the end of the day this is what web stores are doing right now right let's say you have aund hundred million product two years ago in 2021 you were down like 40 to 50 let's say 50% and at that time you did like 20 million of web store revenue and that's grown to 25 million INB store Revenue well guess what now Web Store revenue is 50% of your business right but that's not a good thing right because your business is still down 50 [ __ ] percent right so I get it the margin from the web store is great but that ain't helping the bottom line of your business right across these products because [ __ ] idfa has [ __ ] up everybody with these existing products so fine Web Store helps grow margin but it ain't growing your business you know so stop it yeah stop it it also depends on the genres of the game so talking to some of the developers like with the

more hardcore titles or monetizing titles like let's say Casino uh strategy RPGs the the web store revenu seem to be pretty significant again what you said Crest might be 100% true so that doesn't change things but the the titles that are not as hardcore more on the Casual side we're seeing or we're hearing very small amount of Revenue mice nuts if you will coming in from web stores after all the Integrations and the best practices is being implemented so genre specific based on hearsay and completely agree with that and I think I think it harms Eric's move to the middle thesis right that this is what was supposed to happen post idfa because a lot of the web store concentration is in midcore genres and a lot of it is because it's driven by competitiveness particularly in a 4X game like a it's a competitive advantage to get more Roi per dollar spent because it makes it more likely that your clan is going to win so that to me is totally consistent with what we'd expect but that also reverses a lot of the trends that we see when we do genre level analysis mid cores down uh okay we start

to make some assumptions about web web store numbers and maybe maybe Forex isn't as bad as we think it is maybe Squad PG isn't as bad as we think it is and I think that that harms this move to the middle thesis that you've been trouting the titles where Web Store revenues work especially well have a web skew so it's kind of like yes they are playing it on web they have a PC skew and they're making payments on that platform that they're playing so there's even that element that that we have to take into account that's just not what I'm hearing on the ground mhm right like you can say that and pontificate about it but like at the end of the day when you're talking to C people that are have products that are down 50% like you think that Gina you know is having a good time with their game down like 50% that started long ago that started long ago I I would use Star Trek Fleet command as another example of a game that looks like a down trend line um when you look at when you look at third party intelligence but when you look at some web store assumptions I think that Trend looks a lot different and that game has a PC skew the other piece of Correction feedback I have um hopefully

it doesn't get me in trouble with our friend Lexi at app um sensor Tower data tower Tower the [ __ ] it is now I have no idea what the hell to call it anymore censor Tower you can't change names on me dude I'm too old change my ways you know it's now you know what it is it's you still call [ __ ] app Annie and it's app Annie forever like forever it's app Annie godamn it all right anyway um I thought that their projected revenue for gaming was a little bit ridiculous um and partially because I actually kind of agree that it's going up I'm not really suggesting that I don't really agree with like the thing but they [ __ ] straight lined all the genres like everything is equal right and I I just I think it's a little bit lazy right honestly and this this one chart that really bothered me because it was clearly like not a lot of thought was put in there because if you look at the revenue trends for the by genre you know they're completely different they're all over the place and then when immediately when they when they go into forecast

it's like straighten up and to the right for every single one equally and I'm like hey come on like you could actually make some assumptions around that clearly things are changing for different genres you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather than spending those precious company dollars on building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get into your players hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is Battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scale for Success heroic Labs has your Tech stack covered whether you're looking for a worldclass backend game server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live Ops tooling or reliable Mass scalability heroic Labs has solutions for all of these challenges and it's not just us a deconstructor of fund praising heroic Labs the company works with some of the world's biggest Publishers on many of the Beloved games focus on your game

save a big chunk of cheese and avoid Tech risks with heroic [Music] laps this podcast is brought to you by data AI now you're asking didn't they get acquired by sensor Tower they did and that's awesome here's why whether you loved using data. a or sensor Tower the combined company will offer customers even stronger and more detailed insights on the full Digital customer Journey exciting times lie ahead as sensor Tower and data Jo en forces go to data. a or sensor to.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the business now back to the episode so quick hits here we go Monopoly movie is in the works with Margo Robbie and Lion's Gates so uh she's on fire if you don't know Margot Robbie she was Barbie and she was a producer on the Barbie movie and uh it

seems like she has the sensibility to take toy brands and turn them into something so ironically this is uh with rival Hasbro Barbie is with Mattel dear Margo if you need a consultant please call me wouldn't it be great to work with her uh on the advertiser side um some news coming out of Ma so ma is a mobile marketing conference that happened like the week after the first week of April and uh I didn't go this year because number one I was sick as a dog coming out of GDC and it was like right after GDC so they're moving it a little bit later next year so more people can go but the ad Network Maloo is adding an SDK so in the high level speak for people go tell your UA team to check out Malco and their new SDK feature because it's a way for them to uh really compete with the app 11s the Facebooks and the Googles uh just seems like a new channel that is going to be really viable so in the UK charts uh we

often talk about the US charts uh Command and Conquer we talked about them last week a brand that I got a chance to work on I had no idea this would happen but they flooded the European charts in March after EA put out a bundle on Steam five titles in with this series made it into the top 10 led by CNC generals uh number four at number four the result means that new releases such as WWE 2k2 Four Rise of ronin princess pach Showtime charted lower than expected there are 11 CNC titles in the top 20 Phil this seems like a strategy that you'd love like flood the market with paid downloads and Leverage The Brand awareness for back catalog uh actually I think I kind of love this idea what do you think I'm going to come around to it to be quite Frank I mean we didn't get to talk about uh content warning and their distribution strategy last week and I I hope to have a piece out this week but they're doing like free to claim stuff which I find very interesting there might be something to

this like get get your K Factor up a little bit uh make some more money you know sacrifice a little bit of sales it's straightforward economic calculation I hope we can talk more about these type of strategies in the future basically when they launched and by the way they launched on April Fool's Day they launched for free and they amassed a [ __ ] ton of downloads and now they're selling it for eight bucks because I think it was like it's like a five-person team if I if I remember correctly I don't know I I I looked this up a while ago but I thought that was true strategy was was just absolutely brilliant a mass a bunch of people for free transitioned to eight bucks you know you've probably heard about it from your friends uh so I think playing with some of these launch strategies is really fun Phil we should yeah we should maybe pick it as a topic in a future episode all right moving on Misa Investments Investments very slow week very very slow week only two Investments that I saw really uh one of course web 3 we can't get a one week without web3 investment so us-based Ai and web 3

platform think about it AI web 3 and platform all in one sentence this is of course is getting funded 4 million in seed funding naturally great sentence uh Red Rover secures 1550 million funding in series a around goes towards development of their survival debut title so this is the other investment Red Rover was founded in June 2023 so less than a year ago by funcom Bohemia interactive and Lockwood alumni who told uh this was on was it on Venture be that they plan to drive a breakout growth for survival games the team secured 5 million funding at launch and then the series a came pretty quickly afterwards so I bet that they have great results on play test or something but um Crafton was leading this investment now let's talk about some real Rises so big money raises a16z uh one of the uh the biggest uh most prominent Venture Capital funds in the world has raised a monster loot so

$7.2 billion for the following Venture strategies so they raise one pot that then they divide into different funds one is American dynamism I don't know what that is but it got 600 million um the number two is apps apps got 1 billion games so games fund 2 got 600 million so apps got almost twice the money that games does interesting infrastructure 1.25 billion and growth 3.75 so growth is probably that they continue investing in the companies that are scaling that they have um so going back to games fund so this is a16 Z's games fund uh partner Andrew Chen he wrote on Twitter I'm not going to say x that this is an allnew Next Generation fund that is dedicated to the intersection of tech and games it is equally sized to our debut fund that we raised in 2022 and we are excited to invest this new fund across many stages

and sectors from inception accelerating uh to series A and B and from AI infrastructure to web 3 games to VR AR3 tooling gamified apps game studios and much more the fund targets a $300 billion industry that has spawned incredible companies over the past decade and it's great to be able to build Eric Crest this creates a lot of emotion inside of you I can oh my God this is everything Crest loves this is everything why why is Crest not on Twitter to be clear before I say this this is not bad for gaming this is actually good for gaming right you get it is good to have funds out there investing in gaming new projects new Innovations incubating incubating speedrun that's incubating new platforms yeah you know like just throw spray and prey dude spray and [ __ ] pray right but I can't imagine this is good for LPS

you know raising another 600 million for games they already had six 600 million so $1.2 billion doar what the [ __ ] are they going to be investing in to get the type of returns required for Venture Capital right I don't know I keep coming to the same conclusion as I think the all-in podcast guys are is that VCS are now like Ras right they're basically registered investment advisers they become Capital raising machines you know and they are getting compensated based upon the capability of raising money as opposed to actual like real returns you know and so these management fees are like you know 1 to 2% you know with at 600 million dude that's 12 million bucks for the team that's a lot of cheddar right I honestly think it's literally impossible to generate better returns than market returns in the next 10 years in gaming with $600 million for smaller funds absolutely possible absolutely

because the required returns are much lower from a dollar figure perspective I'm hope I'm wrong I'm hope I'm wrong but I think I'd rather put my money in the vti and so I don't really understand what LPS are seeing that I'm not seeing in this particular circumstance but I don't think this is good for LPS necessarily and I think this could potentially cut off investment in gaming over the longer term causing issues later but let's just hope that can figure out what's going to make these type of returns anybody else I have a question besides me so all the speedruns that are that are going on you know if you're a little company and you go out and you let's say you raise $750,000 in a speedrun and a16z is now on your cap table is that good or bad for these all these little like explain this to me please so it depends it depends as always so if you have the right traction and a16z believes in you

it couldn't be better because they have infinite money so they will fund you until you IPO but the challenge becomes in a situation because they fund so many through speedrun is if let's say I'm an investor and this light this type of a company would come to me and say hey I'm raising a seed so we got a preed which is the early funding from a16z and now I'm raising my first seed round and I'm looking for a lead and I'll be be like well how come a16z is not leading like they they literally have infinite money so they're seeing something that puts them into a bucket where they don't want to invest and they will take just the minimum ticket then that puts you in a bad position so it can be really great or it could be not that great that that would be my my position I'm want to say this right away is that I may be talking I may be over my skis right now because I don't understand this stuff as well but my understanding is that the way the Y combinator works is that they invest early in these companies and then they

proforma invest in subsequent rounds so they actually never take entire rounds like that's the way the business is set up and that's the way that this has been set up but I am already hearing that a16z is cherry-picking deals and fully funding next rounds which makes [ __ ] sense because 750,000 is not enough money to justify even the the effort of this [ __ ] right because they have 600 million money to deploy right so if they do the next round and they are not contributing more significantly than their pro forma then it doesn't even make sense that that's why this whole system doesn't make sense I've talked to numerous people about this it doesn't even make any sense so I'm hearing that I'm hearing that like yeah they are now cherry-picking so what the danger is is that one they don't invest that looks bad but then also if they fully invest then no one else is getting involved right and so it's like yeah it's shut off from the market like as as a as a company right um and you want multiple investors and they may put pressure on

these companies to do fully investing because they want you know they want to deploy and when you have 600 million the other thing is you have to understand is you have to deploy you can't earn the fee unless it's deployed right so you can't get the [ __ ] 2% right so they can't make any money you know until they deploy the funds and these again $750,000 checks ain't going to do it yeah and so and we end up in a situation where because of 600 so when chis says it's a big fund and small funds could work because it like in order for you to get money back from the VC they have to return the full fund for the full 600 and then after that the investors are getting 80% and the other fund managers are getting 20 so that means that in order for the fund to be successful they you know need to return at multiple billions so that leads to a situation where you are that small little company you better be roblocks next because that is the the path you have to be taking where you IPO a 10 billion and then everybody's going to be happy but the fact is also with a16z you have all the resources to be the next Roblox uh but

you have to you know that's the game you're playing you can't exit at at 100 million valuation you can't exit at 200 million valuation 300 even when you're 500 you're like you're no you're not exiting you're you're riding this train all the way to to NASDAQ that's the that's where the train stops we've said now obviously this is a short-term problem potentially is that the the IPO market is closed there's not a lot of acquirers left in the industry right right everyone's retrenching right you know [ __ ] embracer might be back know right it's clear you know there he might be back in the game and see this is where people like Andrew and and Andrew Chen and and the rest of those guys they're probably they're so much smarter than I am so they may be be wow they may be thinking way you know in L that's why I'm over my skis is like these these guys are like Visionaries right so like maybe they have like this concept of what's going to happen 20 years from now the [ __ ] Nostradamus and [ __ ] right I can't see it I can't see it 8% to 9% you throw your money in the [ __ ] bti you

know I I I I have to imagine that's going to be a better return doubling your money more than doubling your money in the next like 10 years you know yeah um so I don't know dude I I just don't know all these big funds I don't know got it yeah no I'm fascinated by this just as someone who worked at big companies I didn't do a lot in this space I am now doing a lot and I work with small companies and they're asking me you know what should we do and so thank you for this educational section I think we're going to do one more on bit craft yeah this is just the news so just just an update so so we talked about a16z raising 7.2 billion the the other fund that raised was bit craft Ventures they collected $275 million for their third early stage investment fund focus on gaming and interactive media so bit bcrafty will continue to invest globally in studios platforms technology with the gaming and interactive media sectors focusing on seed and series a stages and

that brings their assets under management for one billion there's a long ass interview with uh yens on Venture beat you can read that um all the best to them this is a pretty sizable fund to be honest like 300 is a lot I have to I met with him at GDC that's impressive that's impressive yeah like in this environment that he's raising that much money dude that guy that's a lot of leg work like raising and with with a6z raising so much because they raised as a collective of the all funds I think that is a little bit easier than you going around traveling to Saudi Arabia and you name it and with your hat in your in your hands just asking for million there and 500k there and so forth so the guys put in a lot of work and a lot of hours to to raise the sum yeah it's almost half of that a16z number that you just said from you know little little bigcraft they I mean they're going to run into the same return problem as well right

like what are they going to invest at return so we maybe we should get one of these guys on there yeah yeah and talk this through because I I am the math is not working for me so with all of this money that they can deploy why are there still layoffs and closures chis take us through what happened this week all right quali our our boy quali dude John Wright oh John Wright they laid off 40 people I like that you put it on John yeah I know it's like the nicest guy in the world I can't even imagine him firing someone and then uh take two announced 5% layoffs which again feels like oh me too me too right but like they say that they're cancelling projects but they're very unspecific on what they're actually doing but one of it could be Bioshock 4 was a speculation which would suck no um and then the big one which we shouldn't be covering here but we will is that Elon is reducing Workforce by 10% as [ __ ] people start

to realize that EVS are [ __ ] expensive and far less practical than gas cars so anyway he's reducing his te head count by 10% which is a significant amount of people by the way I love my electric car I'm not going to let you do yeah don't [ __ ] on my electric car which is a BMW not a Tesla by the way so what was interesting about Take 2 oh and by the way on Bioshock what a great trans media like can you imagine a TV show based on Bioshock my FV by the way Bioshock one is my favorite game of all time just throwing that out there that's one of mine up it's up there oh at the time it was just absolutely revolutionary it was crazy absolutely crazy like he's a genius that guy Philip is not playing this game never played oh all right Phil take us into games let's talk games slay the Spire 2 has been officially announced this is the OG Rog likee um in many in many regards it's a ccg and it's not going to be in unity it's going to be in gal so congratulations to them from breaking

from the unity uh the unity trap here g g gdo gdo gdo um Destiny 2 player count Doubles Doubles overnight after into the light the final shapes Prismatic subclass reveal so it looks like they got more content going on Bungie had some Some Cuts as well may maybe they're back in the game um the player count on Steam has R risen from around 400 to 500,000 PSU all the way up to 80,000 essentially doubling overnight hey look it content wins content is King uh Disney realm Breakers from Joy City Corp which is a South Korean firm has entered soft launch in Australia this is essentially Rush Royale I'm I'm always amazed that like a Disney kind of metaverse Ip still seems to not have broken through into the mainstream except for that Game Loft cart Rider game that seems to be killing it on switch but not so much on mobile uh Disney Emoji Blitz is pretty big with the Casual audience I think it's more difficult with the core audience and listen I could go do a whole Deep dive on this but a Multiverse for Disney

makes all the sense in the world especially for a casual audience I don't know if it's going to make sense in the Epic fortnite World we will see oh Crest has got thoughts on that later we'll save that one all right sorry keep going quick update on PO world uh you know there's a lot of hype from it but PSU continues to decline it's in its lowest count ever April 16th at around around 300,000 Dau on Steam no idea what's up on Xbox let's continue to to peek in on PO World they have had some increases when they had content updates but it still has not found its base yet some update from our sponsor censor Tower Cod War Zone downloads continue to sputter it's down to about 1 million last week so week over- week downloads continuing to sputter life-to-date revenue is only 3.5 million but it's been steady at about $1 million a week uh unfortunately Dau looks pretty flat they're not stacking du not a good sign for Call of Duty war zone will continue to provide periodic updates but looks like this one may be dead AFK Journey uh we were

talking about that a couple weeks ago looking a little soft uh downloads are falling pretty dramatically we went from 1.1 million to 600,000 in the last couple weeks on iOS in the United States it's down to 182 on the download chart for games so it's falling pretty rapidly Revenue peaked at 4.8 million per week the revenue per download is really strong of course like we don't we don't know what's happening on PC this is only mobile numbers but it's it's weird to see Revenue Peak this early da doesn't look like it's growing either so just like war zone they're not stacking daily active users you expect to stack daily active users as you go through all these downloads and then Revenue should increase over time very strange not to see that happening this early a lot of people were hyping hyping on the AFK Journey train as like the second coming of Christ uh let's continue to look at this one I'm a little doubtful maybe they front-loaded marketing Revenue similar to the gench and Playbook the game that is rising has been brawl Stars this this is like the story of 2024 at least q1 2024 it is on an absolute

freaking tear in December it was doing about 800,000 downloads per week now it's pulling 2.4 million downloads per week Revenue in December was 2.8 million per week now it's up to like 1520 million a week the growth in this title is dramatic it is Extreme and it is an incredible success story We of course have talked about what's been going on in the game in Prior weeks we've talked about the talk that the GM Frank gave at GDC I don't think any of that has is actually doing Justice to what's going on in this title I think I think there's more of a story here than anyone is letting on that deserves a deeper look yeah I mean it was baby shark man that's the whole reason there's no other reason except for baby shark oh stop that was painful to listen to really painful yeah we talked a little bit about content warning they did a free release when the game came out for the first 24 hours we now have some real numbers on it's performed since then it's sold over a million copies in

around two weeks and that is in addition to the 6.2 million downloads it amassed through the launch campaign super super impressive for this studio let's see if the strategy continues to grow and develop I think the other game that I saw do this was like total battle simulator there's there's been one or two other games that have tried this strategy before definitely something I'd love to talk to you Jen about in future episodes roio has canceled its mumen puzzle and design game after more than two years in soft launch what's going on over there in Finland Micha two years in soft launch to see this thing go south sounds like Breaking Bad Phil remember that hey whoa there was a phoenix that came out of that it's called Star Trek Fleet command leave Breaking Bad alone I I think it's great that company spent enough time on a game in soft launch because it kind of like you already built it let's give it a chance to to stand on its own two legs and I really appreciate how scopely has always spent so much time in in softs even on games like Breaking Bad to really see if it has legs or not like in that case uh

Phil great great game I'm curious what what Sega is thinking because when you remove a game out of your road map now you remove the income that you should be or the revenue that you should be making of it so so that kind of brings down what is expected roio to to deliver and it's interesting to see we we saw that that Sega is not as kind of an of a boss as everybody may may be thinking like we were talking about The Relic layoffs and so forth than cretive assembly so I'm not saying that there's going to be layoffs at Dr or anything but I expect that Sega expects them to deliver as as been projected and when they kill games that have been soft lined for such a long time that's a risk that is a risk hey game devs are you tired of dealing with complicated payment processes all over the world well exol's got your back with exola pay station it has a simple userfriendly interface that makes it easy for players to pay for your games and in game content however they want and because the exola paystation user interface is adaptive

and accessible on smartphones tablets and PCs your players will have a seamless experience no matter their preferred device players can save their favorite payment methods for future purchases and on mobile even charge purchases directly to their phone carrier bill on the back end you can customize your checkout with game specific integration options like sidebars and iframes as well as change colors fonts and images to make paystation look and feel like a natural part of your game ready to see exola paystation in action visit ex. Pro payments DDF or visit the link in this podcast description the gains industry is experiencing unprecedented growth with global revenues projected to reach a staggering 268 billion by 2025 but with more players than ever connecting across platforms and devices how can your game stand out against the competition apps flyer has created apps flyer for games to help you unlock your player's true LTV by providing a wealth of game measur ment Solutions unique industry insights and proven best practices our dedicated

Hub is packed with Innovative products industry Partnerships and unrivaled expertise to ensure your game brand adapts and thrives we understand that every game is unique and apps Flyers datadriven insights allow us to cater to your specific needs we know that in today's evolving landscape staying ahead of the curve is crucial trust in apps flyer for games to guide you through this exciting Journey we have the tools the knowledge and the passion to help you succeed in this ever expanding landscape together we'll conquer new worlds both real and fantasy break records and create gaming experience that leave a lasting impact get in touch with absar for games today and Unleash Your game's true potential apps flyer for games supercharging the gaming landscape all right moving on to our first topic which is kind of amusing versus an article uh so the idea here is that the AAA video game studio is dead what now so the author of this substack article is Chris Kiki Chris is now the founder CEO game designer uh at

notorious Studios Inc previously a game designer at blizzard for 13 years on on Wow only on Wow from his LinkedIn I don't I don't know Chris Chris get ready to be doed um the gist of this article let me just give you the background and I'll let the guys jump into their thoughts is that he believes that Indies will kind of take over the world the Triple A Game Dev is broken leaving an opportunity for doublea and Indies to really innovate you know he ref is things like pal world as an example of of you know what smaller folks are able to do he goes on to make a lot of predictions about how game companies will need to change the ideas that he has ranges from mishka's favorite topic around hybrid work won't work uh or maybe hybrid will work but that iners isn't you know important the smaller core teams to the games needing to be design driven can't wait for Phil to chime in on that one the players participating King and Dev which I can comment on because by the way that's

already being done today and if you're not doing that then you're a dumbass like you absolutely have to engage your players so a lot of it I found was like a little bit of what I call a no duh but some of it I think you guys want to weigh in on so uh Misa why don't you go first yeah there was another article on games industry business called Sabers Matthew KK maybe it's pronounced car uh that says the AAA gaming model is going to change so this is kind of like part of this same type of rhetoric though this was a truly very much opinionated piece from a long time staffer from blizzard and this Chris C is a is a writer a game designer entire career in blizzard as you said on one hand he has not been corrupted by the management layer but on the other hand we have to take it into account when you're reading this he doesn't have the the same context that managers tend to have at these big companies so it's an interesting Viewpoint and it is an opinion piece because clearly no body really went through this and there's no

s such of a like a critical review before this was released so on one hand he makes a statement an opinion but there's no counter to it it's not like a balanced thinking on one hand on the other hand and this is what I think it's more like one way so I actually found that I agree to most of the points as Jen you said no duh like makes sense like no to fully remote teams yeah yeah that's that that's the data that we're hearing from most of the companies there are some companies that are make it but most of the companies fully remote just doesn't work he talks about smaller core teams interestingly enough this is the same thing that in the saber uh saber CEO's interview came through he was talking a lot about smaller core teams in in the same sentence that you scale the production with these auxiliary teams that are based outside California or outside the expensive areas he was mentioning buenos areas and Serbia saying that you can have the same quality of results same employees for fifth of the cost and that is kind of

like how you how you save and create great games at the same time um he talked in this article talked about crossplatform sure we haven't just seen many great examples of crossplatform titles interesting point he said uh something about good enough production values was one of the statements that's something that doesn't come through triaa and I think it's important to to uh not to push the uh the production quality so high and then keeping players of part of development so web 3 is kind of showing the way with that but anyways there are a few points that I disagreed with one was the sort of approach I don't know Jen when you think about this that marketing needs to be authentic and player driven what the [ __ ] are we talking about are we are we like Circa 1999 what is happening right now yeah yeah this this point I was like uh and that the same thing was the designers need to be the CEOs so any CEO of a company should be a designer and dude we've evolved past this like

decades ago decades decades yeah maybe we should just jump over this this article what you guys think I find I I do find that folks that worked at Blizzard or at Riot and it in some of these cultures especially when you're in a spec one specific culture at a big company for a long time and this is by the way what has happened to me in working on all these big companies now that I work across all the companies I kind of realized the error of my ways that I got sucked into a lot of old school thinking and there is so much new thinking out there and everyone else has been evolving but at the big companies they're not able to kind of keep up with this new approach to gaming that's kind of my impression in reading this is now that he's on the outside he's like oh [ __ ] everything that I know about being at blizzard is very different now and that's why I call it no dub because oh he's seeing the light he's seeing the light of all of you know everything else we see on the outside that was my kind of that's interesting and the Pendulum

kind of swings over because then it ends up and like he reads books like Reinventing organization and creates this whole argument that they shouldn't be any hierarchies you should be driving you know basically this this whole Anarchist Playbook against any big organization how they run so okay now I kind of get it now I kind of get it so that's fine like takeaway for folks if you're if you're listening and you're at a big company know that there is a whole other world out there there there's a whole other way of doing things figure out ways to get exposure this is like when I I I jok that I had never really been to GDC that often because they won't let you go when you're at a big company cuz there's you know you're number one is you're going to share all the secrets or number two is you're looking to look for another job but these are all ways for you to talk to other people and bring back that like new Innovative knowledge to the big companies although it's really difficult to move the battleship I have to agree with you here this is ridiculous like the majority of the

revenue being generated by our industry is AAA game development whether it's on mobile or console full stop right like look we saw the newo data that kind of says exactly what I've been saying for the last [ __ ] five years on this podcast right and it's like new games were eight% of the Play Time new games 8% of the play time and the majority of those were super AAA right including Hogwarts right so it's like no you're wrong right if he had said forget Triple A for a moment he said hey here's what to do as an indie hey man I'm all about that that's fine right there is a market out there for small games and small Revenue right go for it the Market's big huge but if you're talking about what's driving the market the gaming Market it's triaa it's big titles um both for mobile and console so enough you know they've won the market and I don't think there's any much room for anything else at these levels right absolutely I don't know what the [ __ ] he's talking about yeah I think we also

heard from you know Matt p piscatella and what is that word are they Sana and NPD their data also in addition to the newu data he calls it the black hole of gaming where all ours are going to games and by the way they're AAA games that have been out in the market for years you know the Minecrafts the fortnites and all of those of the world so I think it's a good point I think he might be coming from this idea of hey if out in the world trying to start something new this might be the way that you have to approach it to kind of start something up and you know the one thing I wanted to say just to wrap this up on the marketing side of things is and Chris I know you disagree with me a little bit on this that Community is the new social which replaced what was TV advertising and the way that marketers are having to use community and influencers to really Market the games is is actually completely different than what it used to be so I I might even make the

argument that AAA marketing is dead and I don't disagree with that why I don't know why would you every time talk about Community as like a really big viable way to Market things you're like oh it's not going to scale it's not going to do it well for web 3 is what I was really talking about okay like okay I don't know specifically what you're talking about but no I believe 100% like you know TV advertising always never made sense to me when I was at EA I was always railing against it because it didn't it didn't have any Roi right even back then you know and nowadays you're right influencers and social media that like that that's where marketing is now so no I don't disagree with there so let's talk about another AAA that is happening at Disney with all of the hires we we touched on it a bit last week that they are basically hiring all these like experts from blizzards and all these other you know companies to to set up and do do games inside of Disney

cross yeah I've been battling it out on LinkedIn on this nonsense but like yeah I mean Disney you know gaming industry veterans like Sean shopow and like Ray G gresco and bror whatever the [ __ ] and Jong all these guys are joining Disney to build a team evidently to do something right but what is that exactly so I would argue that you know they're like managing the business of Licensing games licensing properties to other people but this is like on the tale of of this big investment in Epic you know the a million five investment in Epic so I guess what I really want to get across here is that two big things one the investment in Epic is not Disney getting into games business it is factually not okay now I could be wrong longer term that they maybe are trying to get into the game games business by building teams and building games this is not an opinion this is an investment right this

is like buying stock on the NASDAQ right they bought $1.5 million of stock in a private company okay now there's a fancy licensing agreement attached to this right so they are actually licensing properties from Disney right but this is a balance sheet transaction okay and as far as I understand it it was changing the narrative you know for the new you know CEO or new old CEO Iger um and it's working Stock's up 30% so he's doing his job like he's changing the narrative on the stock so until they hire full development teams and pay money out of their own p&l like they are not making games at Disney right now they are not making games at Disney right this is the this this is what I want to be clear on but there's pundit out there I you know a few people have been talking about this like oh yeah they're back in they're in again but what I would say is not again please not again again I can't go through this again this is the third time right the second first two times

they failed so [ __ ] miserably and I had to watch it real time at them failing because they don't know how to make games they don't want to make games the organization's not set up to make games no one wants to go there to work to make games at Disney because it's not a priority right okay so that's the one thing I want to be clear on this and if I'm wrong please let me know but I don't think I am anybody disagree with me on this point I lived it as well um except when I worked there I was in consumer products and so I was there during the era of Kingdom Hearts the Tron game and turac do you remember turac when they bought app dinosaur hunter the dinosaur hunter yeah they of course so when I was there it was like we're going to get into games and we bought Avalanche and then Tac bombed and they're like we're at of games and so and we talked about Heatherly Chris Heatherly who we you know friend of the Pod who um did something similar at Universal where you know he tried to do stuff with Jurassic

and other brands and I think the problem is that the you're right CR like number one is not a priority number two is I don't know how to do it number three is it's a public company and in gaming when you slip your dates or if you have a Miss like everyone just throws up their hands and quits which is ironic because they have bad movies all the time that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars making and marketing but they don't have the same tolerance from for the game industry and so until there are folks that really understand and have the patience to do that inside of Disney which they don't and they you know there a lot of the people aren't very different than it was 20 years ago then I see it as a huge challenge the only thing that is different this time is this epic investment and maybe because it's so much they have to have patience to wait that out but I don't know like they hired lots of game industry people in the past remember John Pleasants from EA went to run it and yeah playfish right didn't they acquired playfish

disaster they got their ass kicked and so I mean I like the investment in it I like the idea of content and story and all of these great things but it just doesn't work inside of the Hollywood Studios for some reason they nobody can figure this out yeah and so like the 1.5 billion people keep talking about but these games are being made and they're being funded by epic at epic's discretion not Disney right they they'd have no control over this 1.5 million billion dollars that they invested in the company that this is epic's money now right this is not a second-party deal this is not a thirdparty deal epic gets like 80% of this revenue and Disney Gets about 20 right 15 to 20 depending on what licensing agreement they sign and I'm sure it's [ __ ] complex but this is what the this is the arrangement is and I said this the last time we spoke about this is that this is absolutely [ __ ] immaterial for Disney's PN full stop right they make $89 billion a year so

let's say they have ma miraculously achieved like two billion in revenue from this Disney [ __ ] on Epic that's $400 million to Disney at most at most right that is [ __ ] mice nuts absolutely mice nuts I mean it's a great margin Revenue don't get me wrong but it is not Material at all the Disney so this is just corporate PR at its finest it is changing The Narrative of the stock and that is it that is all it's it's a smaller scale gen right she didn't she manage the Hasbro [ __ ] for EA for years and years and years right yeah like so I mean but you were at the but you were on the development side though that's so at has well I actually was at Hasbro but I would made toys at Hasbro and then I was at EA making games so I've been on both sides of and then at Disney I was a lur so I was in a sense working with Partners to make games and so the challenge with what they're setting up and by the way there is a Litany of VPS underneath this this is

the most bloat that I have seen at Disney in for forever because they're not doing anything so approvals are going listen I'm not necessarily defending this but what I'm saying is they they are trying to signal that they care I don't think we know everything that they have working yet I do know most recently the licensing business is the most glorious beautiful business out there if you or a Content holder of Ip that people care about cuz all you got to do is say sure you can do that let's do some paper let's let's do a deal I'm going to do some approvals you take all of the risk and I'm going to get my 15 to 25% and it just rolls in like it is a beautiful business I don't know why they don't just keep doing that and why they need 10 VPS and and even more expensive people to do deals I mean they must be saying they're going to make stuff but you're right right the the investment in that it's mice nuts why are you taking your eye off the ball of theme parks put

all of your money into theme parks new IP expanding that's where Disney is winning right now that's the cash cow my final Point here actually I wanted to make this originally the first point is that I do agree that they should be doing more games like with their IPs that's not what I'm suggesting I just suggesting let's not have them actually make games at Disney because I don't think that is a good idea that is not a good long-term viable strategy no matter much you want it to happen how much it makes sense on paper how much you know Booze Allen and McKenzie can put it on a [ __ ] slide and make it make sense right it doesn't make any [ __ ] sense that has never worked the only place that's ever worked is a Warner and there were specific circumstances of why that worked but every other [ __ ] experiment is this failed right NBC Fox [ __ ] Disney twice [ __ ] Lucas Arts was an absolute train wreck of Epic Proportions in every [ __ ] away anybody you talk to that was part of that would just wanted to tear their [ __ ] eyes out after [ __ ] working at that place

you know so anyway just stop and it's Chris Heatherly that's driving me insane he should know better he should know better he's the one out there like pontificating this [ __ ] D they're not making games at Disney they are not and they will not and if they do I will be wrong but if they do they will fail so whatever all right we moving on and maybe we should tip them if they do make some games so there's a lot of uh controversy at least in my LinkedIn around the idea of tipping in games so um what had happened was former blizzard president Mike yabara took to Twitter a few days ago to suggest a new form of showing developer appreciation having the option to leave a 10 or $20 tip on a game you love you know I I like the sentiment of this at least so so here's what he said is when I beat a game there are some games that leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was your bar wrote at the end of the game I'm often thought I wish I could leave these folks A10 or $20 tip because it was worth it

it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn't try to nickel and dime me every second so this was you know I I thought kind of like a nice gesture he was saying is like he talked about God of War or balter's Gate 3 or some of these other like really big impressive games and he got [ __ ] on in the Press by people saying hey you know the idea of a tip I've already given you 70 bucks like now you want more money how do I know the developer is actually going to get the money so while while tipping culture is kind of going crazy in the US especially and other around the world is a little bit different I don't think his thought comes from a bad place I think it comes from an appreciation place like how do you signal that and feels like this might work in freeto playay games or might work it with some like indie games so I like the thought but the execution is where the problem is and how do you do you make sure this goes to the right people how do you how do you do this in a way that doesn't feel like you're

you're greedy bastards anyone have thoughts on this well we know that Tik Tok uh is making bank of a tipping that's a different thing of course but they have a tipping feature and that's where you tip the creators uh we know Instagram is testing tipping so the way I see this is definitely not what he meant but the way I see tipping is more like it unlocks the spending ceiling because you can you know if you're a real way you can essentially spend a lot of money on just tipping the creators now I don't know tipping is so US based like it doesn't really happen outside the US I was just recently at GDC and I was again like reminded that here the price that is being asked like you also need to pay to the staff because the restaurant does not pay for for the staff it's like an auxiliary service so anyways tipping is is very weird outside us uh but I get his point and I think it comes from a good place I I'm kind of amazed at the backlash like where is this backlash coming from I think the tips are like

captured in the premium SKS for all these games right which is a you know if you buy it's a $70 or $60 game and you buy this $80 game or the $100 game there there's your tip right I mean like so and that's the better way to do it as as Phil has said numerous times on the podcast which I 100% agree so tipping after the fact very cultural and very weird oh you know how you could tip argument like after you listen to this episode you can go go to and and give us all the five stars that's a free tip that helps with the algorithm you don't have to spend on anything just give us a thumbs up or or whatever app you're using that's a huge hugely appreciated tip for the whole crew we'll divide the Stars Among Us oh my God I love how you turned it into something about us well done all right this podcast is about chilling no it's not no it's not I'll give you a tip I'll give you a tip don't fart around campfires there we go all right well on that note all right everyone thanks for

another great week chis hope you feel better and good to have you back and see you guys next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fun.com can apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening