TWIG #279 Supercell's Squad Busters vs. Dream's Royal Kingdom

[Music] hello and welcome to Twig 279 where we read and the still all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to I am your host Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno so today we have as usual Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting hey hey Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting Group and back to life not sick anymore ah I'm I'm I'm alive I'm alive it was a week a week of of pain the whole family was just decimated and uh Mishka the pope Emperor and president of deconstructor of fun is out this week so Laura Toranto senior director of product at big fish can I be like the queen or something of can I be Queen something you don't have anything

to do with Mishka you don't want to be a part of that it's a it's a rotten Empire I I got I got one the emperor has no clothes so to speak queen of product deep Dives at deconstructor of fun there you go better title spot-on branding right there by your resident marketer anyway so here's what we got for you today we thought we be we would be done talking embracer but nope we have a lot to talk about sadly you're going to have to just put up with us uh supercell Squad Busters is out in soft launch Phil has thoughts Royal Kingdom has resoft launched I guess that's a thing now and we'll talk about what changed and a little bit about celebrity collab or collaboration history and if there's a future with celebrity collaboration so guys you must be excited Amazon green lit a second season of Fallout I am personally a Last of Us fan in a Fallout versus Last of Us post-apocalyptic TV

Battle Royale who wins who wins in this battle all Last of Us for sure I mean come on I don't know there's any comparison right that that show is amazing I think it's much more engaging like dark scary I think the whole thing is thing I think PA it's a great streaming show and it's a great like shout out to the fiction I would say I don't I think someone said this last week but it should have been released over a period of time it should not have been just dumped on us right I think it would have gotten a lot more bang for its buck and how much more longer term impact if they had like extended over a month or so but they're both great the fact that these adaptations of games are good is great for gaming and this whole trans media Mucky muck baloney right I mean yeah no no it's not but like okay again like we said last week like Fallout the game is not going to be out for another [ __ ] 8 10 years so exactly how does this help right I agree with you there I have been in my feed

people have been telling me Fallout is better than last of us and I I I think they have radiation poisoning like what on Earth could beat last of us is Phil what are your thoughts I don't know whichever one makes the most money and right now Fallout has so many more monetizable elements it's like it's hard to monetize last of us such as like a serious drama an IP is way better you can multi franchise multiple Series in development at once deeper Pockets I'm on team Fallout okay oh all right okay all right so good point good point hear you there so uh Phil why don't you show for us I think you've got a couple things yes so Brett Novak friend of the podcast and also the owner of liquid and grit and I are doing a monthly economic Round Table we had like a little bit of fun a couple months ago when we did it and we've decided to make it a regular thing reach out to him for an invite and also we're going to be talking about Marvel snap and I'm going to be responding I guess to Eric your podcast that you have with Matt there's a lot of claims flying around when you guys were talking about how aggressive they're

willing to be when it comes to mization and I still find them lacking quite a bit they haven't solved a lot of their card distribution problems they they said they were they were they were Fearless in their ability to monetize but like they remov Loom boxes from the game and soft launch there's just a lot that that game is trying to figure out right now and it deserves a deeper dive and I'm happy to do it tomorrow so reach out to Brett for more this was my point on the podcast right I mean that was my criticism to him I called him out on it I'm like dud this game was not aggressive enough of monetization right oh I to toally agree I I think his answers weren't satisfactory though I think they don't match the evidence they don't match the evidence like they pulled back from loot boxes that's a clear Reddit this arm was here and the other arm was here and that's exactly what he could say you know what I'm saying now that we're on YouTube I'm USIC visual like you want to see the [ __ ] [ __ ] come on YouTube right um anyway yeah no no I mean I want to just put him over the coals on this [ __ ] right because you're right this this game was like huge missed opportunity

like in in in the most extreme way and yeah it's because they have the mentality of blizzard right they have that kind of like well they don't know free to play they don't know freeo play they don't and there was a GDC talk that's kind of gotten under the radar by one of their senior directors a product about how to design a ccg without loot boxes and just to be clear like Marvel snap does have loot boxes you know they they just called them different things and they give them out in collection level but like that talk has kind of gone under the radar and I think deserves more conversation I haven't seen it myself I'm hopping into it tonight but I know that's hopefully going to address some of the things that we'll be talking about tomorrow so so I'm happy to bring insights from that talk too and also on a personal level a shout out to uh Brett I went up to watch his son play basketball and his son is like this little tiny skinny kid but dude the guy kid shoots like Curry I me it's unbelievable like the skills that these kids have at these level he's like a fifth grader Okay and like he's really really into it he wears the bandana he's got the whole thing going right and the

kid can just shoot you know this is how bored I am this weekend my kid doesn't have any basketball I'm going out to see parents kids basketball games but no I wanted to hang out with Brett anyway shout out to Brett and his son well I'm Gonna Keep the Brett train going uh because I actually recorded a liquid and grit round table last week so we covered App Store featuring UA creative fail ads uh the clashroyale chess.com collaboration so the link is posted in the deconstructor fund promotions tab I I I can you know re rebump that up as well or reach out to Brett uh Noak and it's n o w a k he is in the the channel obviously on LinkedIn as well so the final shill is I wish MCO was here so I could give him some [ __ ] in all of the best ways about his most recent interview that just launched so he was promoting it on LinkedIn and and he

leads it into the the promotion with this for over a decade I believe that product comes before marketing I was wrong what where is he this is what he says why does he never say this on the podcast he has to go meet with this actually you know really well-known agency called Bond the whole episode is about how uh they rebranded merge Gardens so rebranding is a little bit of a of a misnomer I think they did a lot of of the character updates the setting and while sometimes that can transition into the marketing assets uh they kind of rebranded the inside of the game and they drove a lot of like success with that so external agencies can actually help some game teams and he talks a little bit about how supercell actually used a lot of agencies like this on the side quietly on the side for over a decade so good podcast to go check out so no Corrections T right there are some corrections on this whole Reon thing I I

don't know exactly what it is yet so I'm I'm going to find out later today uh because someone reached out and said hey dude you don't know what the [ __ ] you're talking about about what with andreen I don't think it's actually GNA make andreen look any better I think it's going to make them look worse I I imagine it has something to do with the fact that the money that they're suggesting that they have they don't have and that they may actually not have that kind of money yet like but okay I did get a message literally a an hour after the podcast drop from andreen saying tell me what you really think you know it's like well I mean but but no real retort on on what I was saying but more like Jesus dude why don't you call me before you rip us a new one right I'm actually out next week because I'm at Epic uh but I will be back the following week and hopefully I can give you guys some kind of uh correction on my nonsense about okay I didn't think you RI them but I I think

and you qualified some of the things that you said you're like I might be over my skis on this but so yeah let's talk about that it's interesting they have an a6z podcast where Andrew Tren who leads games interviewed you know Andre and Horwitz and they talked about like you know this investment the 600 million that they're putting in the games and what they're really thinking about the intersection of games and technology so it was kind of interesting just to hear kind of their perspective on what what they want to do and where their focus on that it's the speedrun thing that I'm just curious about especially cuz people keep asking me of you know what the value is of that okay anybody that's been doing venture capital for a long period of time and I just listened to another podcast with some ogs that they're just like these funds are ridiculous in size like these don't be this is not a venture capital fund anymore you know that that's the whole main point of this is like there's so much supply of funds for this that they are making Investments that are not Venture any more right so that that's

the main kind of theme that I'm hearing out there maybe we should have a guest yeah somebody who is an expert okay let's do that let's let's schedule that all right going into Quick hits um from an overall standpoint so there's a new article about Apple arcade in the guardian today today is Wednesday by the way April 24th but to spare you hearing about embracer and apple arcade for the 10th time from us I'm just going to post the the link in the channel you can kind of go in it's Apple's team defending a lot of their strategy and and talking about how they're seeing success so nobody say anything we're going to just move on all right so this is kind of an interesting topic and I I debated on bringing it up but the reason why I want to bring it up is because I think that we have a lot of Founders here who have to do employment contracts so in the US the Federal Trade Commission issued a rule to promote competition by Banning non-competes Nationwide protecting the

fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs increasing Innovation and fostering new business formation so there are a couple of states in the US California being one of them where California actually doesn't uphold non competes anyway but you know all of the companies that are here do it so just this morning basically the US Chamber of Commerce and business groups file another lawsuit seeking to block the band on non-competes so this this is kicking off a huge legal battle between two different groups of constituents um and I will say this is our friends in Canada at the great white North they actually legitimately enforce non-c compete agreements as far as I understand it this was a huge issue for some of the Ubisoft guys over the years um in terms of their capability of moving from one place to another um I don't know if that's still the case but they enforced it at least in California was never enforceable right yeah uh King does this too it's really annoying Europeans European thing there's like this what

they call King vacation CU you still get paid during your 3mon non- compete but that's 6 months after you hand in no a 3mon notice period in Europe up which Americans I'm sure your jaw is dropping uh three months and then another three months with the non comp You' be out for six months before you take another job I mean that is that is a really sluggish labor market it could not be more European I want to see this in Europe not not over here in the states I I don't think this is going to do much California was was everything anyways and this was already there I heard supercell gives a year but I don't know I might be wrong I'm not I you know who knows but I think U when I read into this a little bit what I didn't realize is that if you make a salary over 151,000 the non-competes they don't apply so the idea is that the lower level folks should not be held to a non-compete because they should be able to go freely but if you're an executive and you have the resources to negotiate your contract you're going to be held to that except obviously California or it doesn't matter and so I was like well that's a little bit unfair $11,000 in California is kind of like director

level senior manager level jobs like I when the government does these things it it doesn't often make a ton of sense but I think they're they're taking a step in the right direction all right moving on more government stuff I it's going to be the government episode uh for the US so Tick Tock the House and Senate have just passed a bill which ironically was funding for Wars with Ukraine and for Israel but snuck in there was a divestment Clause it's often called a ban of Tik Tock in the United States so the language is that the Chinese government will have to let Tik Tok be sold in I don't know 200 something days under a year or it will be banned from the US app stores Crest did I get that right I think so and my understanding is that bite dance the the Chinese company's not willing to do that so this in essence could be a ban on Tik Tok I'm not c a big deal yeah I'm not losing any sleep over it but like I know that it's

not a very popular idea so we'll see we'll see and again over skis right I don't know we who who knows where the wind's going to blow on this politically and it's you know very political so you don't really know what the ultimate thing is going to be maybe they Chinese decide that it's okay in some way uh depending on the structure but the people that I was talking to at GDC were basically there's just no way that Tik Tok will ever do that we'll keep an eye on that Biden is expected to sign that into law this week so the clock will start ticking also that was a good one the clock will start tick tocking yeah that was good F I finally give a f that you you approve of oh my God didn't do it intentionally unfortunately oh that's true oh that's true you you hate when I do it intentionally okay um I've been chatting with Matt piscatella from snpd so he was really generous he's like do you guys have any questions for us and I threw them like 10 things and and

so the one that he gave us some data was hell divers to um I was curious how this was doing on an engagement standpoint all his data is us only but I'm just always curious to know especially for these PC console folks what's going on he says that it's not growing in terms of Da in the US but it's holding pretty well steam uh is still seeing above 133% of Da compared to around 4% of PS5 active so this has been pretty steady for over a month it's come down a bit the first from the first few weeks where it was trending at 23 to 28% of steam actives and just shy of 10% of PS5 actives through late Feb to mid-march so solid retention overall but there's some signs of slowing so thank you Matt for giving us this data I'm going to bug him about I think fortnite is the one he's going to give us a little bit more on next in the long list of things that I've asked him to do so in the world of collabs um we're going to talk a little

bit about this later but there are a couple I wanted to highlight up front fortnite announced the next musical guest it's kind of like Satur Night Live where it's like who's going to be on next Billy ish is going to be the next musical guest coming on after what was it Slim Shady Eminem with emem Eminem why did I forget Eminem I'm like Slim Shady yeah the ingame concert yes Billy ish is is up next and then uh because I'm playing travel town and I am a huge fan they're partnering with the Great British Bake Off which is hilarious I love this um Integrations have gone too far yeah no it's crazy you know it's crazy but it's really fun and it's well done and it's adorable to see kind of the characters come to life all right Laura all right I'm covering investments in m&a so we have sweden-based games developer modern times group has acquired us-based um game developer Auto attack game via its subsidary ninja kiwi and does

anyone else remember Bloons from way back when yeah I think that's uh that's that's at the Apple arcade hospice these days um this acquisition will enable ninjak kiwi and auto attack to collaborate on developing future Tower Defense games and it's mostly Auto attack is primarily known for Legion Tower Defense modes and a successful transition to Legion Tower Defense 2 us-based web 3 games devel Vel ER Avalon Corp has raised 10 million in a funding round LED by bcrafty supported ugc mm o RPG Avalon which aims to unite web 2 and web three gaming aspects um they raised they previously raised 13 million back in February 2023 I kind of put this in because it had so many acronyms and I was like oh they're covering all the bases the world's first VR nfts right on

their website VR nft web 2 web 3 blockchain AI ugc was this really all in one press release dude bit craft is working [ __ ] overtime right now man Jesus Christ holy crap I don't heard these gu I have to look into these this amazing game that's gonna bring all these things together they didn't say trans media though so oh that's next that's that I mean you have to hold some powder drive for your next press relief that's correct what could go wrong last one turkey based mobile developer Mage games has secured 3.5 million in funding led by ecta did I pronounce that correctly so the investment will be used for the game development process the company will be focused on competitive mobile mobile PVP games I had just a quick look at their LinkedIn there's a lot of interesting companies and developers that are based in Turkey so I'm curious to see what they come out with they usually most of

the founders in sea level at sea levels have worked uh together before at a company called Massimo which had a lot of kind of smaller PVP Games social games so I did look to see if they came from Peak that was my I was wondering if they' come from Peak and they had not cool this isn't on there but chis did you see first of all Atari is still around didn't realize this and that they wanted to bring back the publishing arm called called was it infogr dude that's old old school [ __ ] right did you see I did see that yeah like why I I mean I if they're trying to build a publishing org I mean I think there is some Nostalgia between the old school guys I've actually recently in the last couple weeks I've been talking to a lot of the kind of like steam like PC based game developers and they're all kind of like that where they have this Nostalgia for the uh you know the old labels and I think INF infograms is this one of those things is like super old school and if

they want to build a publishing work why not use an IP that they have as opposed to publishing it under Atari which I think has a different connotation right yeah fair point I I felt really uh old when I read that I was like oh yeah I remember that I'm like oh no I guess that people on the podcast listening would probably CU I I think we skew a little older not the mobile guys the mobile guys don't know [ __ ] all the mobile guys are like what let's move on they they're thinking yeah yeah they're like God damn you all you've heard of 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 fun 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] labs this podcast is brought to you by data now you're asking didn't they get acquired by sensor Tower they did and that's awesome here's why what do 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 tower.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the business now back to the

episode so let's talk games Phil L and Studios the makers of balers Gate 3 is working on they're working on two new original games and the studio founder said in a note that this is an exciting opportunity to develop our own IPS um and they have two new projects and couldn't be more excited about what's in store so I guess don't look at a lot of DLC support for Boulders Gate 3 uh Neil long of mobile gamer Biz reports that Apple approved game emulator Delta hits 3 million download loads in 4 days this looks like a Game Boy when you've seen screenshots of it you can load ROMs it's clearly a violation of a million different IP laws but like this could not be easier if you're a Nintendo build that and sell it you know let just let me buy the old games like this could not be easier just put a Game Boy on the damn the damn phone like it's consistent with your your principal frustrating just have them go in and they can own this Market buildbox 4 launches with no code AI g game generation creation engine that's from Venture beat uh a lot of no code AI ugc

tools an update on some of the titles we've been covering AFK Journey appears to have stabilized on a daily basis it's looking at around half a million users and it's doing around 600,000 per day on 70k downloads so we could be looking at maybe2 200 million $250 million run rate if you think about the pcq and the web stores let's see if it continues to hold all of the metrics seem to be steady so it looks like it could have really found a steady state war zone still not looking the greatest uh it is stabilizing a little bit revenue is too still pretty weak relative to downloads and relative to active users I think this could be maybe a 50 million a year product um it doesn't look that ambitious in terms of what what it can do in terms of growth I mean they're always going to tell you that like you could transfer your Cosmetics from the HD version so it's It's tricky to attribute Revenue to the skew because you could be getting a purchase on the PC and it could be driven by mobile player at least that's the that's the executive PowerPoint exactly that's exactly what they're going to say in the press release too

like I can already see it being written incremental Revenue I'll guarantee you their game Economist team has not has not looked at that metric um another Monopoly go update uh there's softness in weekly active users it's down from a peak of 8 million in September 2023 to 6 million as recently as last week that's a 25% decline downloads are softening we go from a million a week right now and it's down from a high of 2.5 million September Revenue still growing though still reaching some ambitious Heights so it looks like they're stacking customers they're going through a bunch of downloads they're acquiring customers they're sticking to the game are they stacking customers or stacking spend well if they're stacking customers I think that that will lead to increases in Revenue I think that's why we've seen Revenue grow is that the percentage of players who have purchased at some point prior during that week I think that number is growing so you're converting more people even though the overall pie is is lower we used to crack DAC daily

customers at scopely yep I I I put those reports together yeah I would make the argument that they're likely getting more spend from their existing payers instead of getting new payers I think they're growing I think if you look at daily active customers weekly after I'm I'm sure that they are growing over time and like those are the people that are likely to convert when you run sales when you run Live Events you just said that they're down 25% from an MA perspective and a weekly active user but that's different than customer customers are stickier than than users by by sh they have much higher retention rates okay I see what you're saying they custom okay got it even though the pie is lower on the audience coming in they're converting more I wouldn't even say that you can just hold that constant like the the absolute number of daily active customers are increasing in the game as they continue to turn through downloads because their retention rates are so high for customers all right it will Peak at some point for sure but I think it's still I will allow it for now I will allow it for now okay okay we can we can debate this in the future um thank God Fallout numbers have peaked on Steam they're finally on the decline

we're done hearing these press releases about like another another metric out it's finally over uh I do think like there's still there's still some shrapnel we should sort through in terms about whether or not this stuff makes sense and under what conditions it makes sense like I think you were alluding to Jen last week like there's timing there's timing that matters you mean this the whole idea of like a movie game but the constraints are costly so those are trade-offs uh I definitely think we should talk about that in the future um because I don't think these these are not done we're going to see more and more of these articles come out yeah every time there's media project it actually I got a lot of folks supporting me and the argument that I had with you all at the beginning it was actually just our banter we were arguing and you guys were [ __ ] on trans media and I was saying well well it's a long-term play it's a franchise plan it's a brand building activity it's multiple lines of business how you extend your IP into various sections that's where you can really win and they're like well you kind of said it Jen but you didn't play into it so maybe we do have a trans media section where we go into it funny

enough um Barry dorf from Hasbro just announced that they just did a deal for clue and clue is coming out on uh a TV show and a movie which it's not necessarily video game trans media but you know from a licensing perspective and God you you guys remember the original clue I said how many endings are going to are you going to have in the TV show and the movie anyone remember that that movie had like three endings you guys were like 5 years old and no one's copied it because it gets your repeat going I want to see every ending you know multiply ticket times the number of endings you know Mass Effect could have learned something yeah there's a lot a good things to do with franchise extension perhaps the brand maybe we need to Rebrand trans media and call it franchise planning or franchise management where where content happens to be a pillar in the overall approach to how you develop your your franchise cuz trans media I think with you all has a a bad taste in your mouth and maybe I need to just need to Rebrand that I don't think that's how it works it's

called window dressing that's why so rebranding is is is what you would call window like that that's when we change the wording of something to make you think differently about the same thing yeah no I I know I know your bag of tricks so so my objection to trans media generally speaking is that to think that one team can do it all that's my biggest problem with trans media agre the fact that Ubisoft thinks that their [ __ ] Assassin's Creed team can make a game make a mobile game make a movie make a TV series is just [ __ ] is absolute [ __ ] that's why it drives me insane if you see a VC pitch or a company pitch talking about trans media you can't do it all the the skill set of making a game is different from making a movie it's different making a TV show is different from making a mobile game right tripa and mobile so that's what bothers me about it it's because the word is just used in that way so flippantly on the flip side like clearly we're seeing evidence of transmed of things working in the marketplace but

they're being done by distinct groups of people at the most asinine times right like yeah you know Fallout show coming out without a game coming out in like 20 years from now is like ridiculous like it that's not a trans media strategy that is just a brand strategy so I kind of actually appreciate the fact that you can you know rename it and that makes it more makes it make more sense to me so that's kind of my you are absolutely correct so let me be like 100% clear on why Last of Us worked so the creative director of the game went and found an absolute genius TV show creative director uh he did Chernobyl if you didn't see Chernobyl on HBO just fantastic show the creative director of the show and I'm sorry I'm forgetting their names he was a fan of the game so you had the game the game creative director who's a fan of the guy who made this other great show and vice versa they went and they mind melded to use a Star Trek term and and made a fantastic

piece of creative for TV because the game guy let the TV guy take the reins and do what needs to be done for the medium of Television that's how you have success the problem in the past with trans media from video game to TV show has been exactly what you're saying these like egotistical video game guys thinking that they know how to make any other type of creative in another medium and you don't you have to hand over the range you have to build a brand Bible and say this is the essence and let me give you some feedback but you got to let the experts do their thing and it's vice versa to video games as well which is why there's always a lot of pain at Disney the movie guys want to tell the game guys what to do and the game guys are like [ __ ] you you don't know how to make a game so you have to let the experts have their creative freedom which is why Barbie worked that's exactly why the Barbie movie worked is Mattel was like hands off they're like okay here's what you got to do to make Barbie barie Barbie but hey Greta you

know Gerwig and and margar Robbie you go do your thing so sorry I didn't feel like you basically also covered the the gist of the U celebrity IP Integrations for games because it's the same message it's literally the same message extremely similar except for you are a little bit more lasered in to one Persona and one person's brand which can be polarizing but we'll hit that later first guess what we're going to talk about everybody Embrace her all right let me give a recap Crest before you lose your [ __ ] okay here we go so this is the topic that won't just die it's just going to split into three different stories like those creepy kind of worm experiments you do when you're in middle school and you cut the worm and it like grows back so embracer announced that it's splitting into three groups one of them OTE is the tabletop game publisher and it's not even a video game Division and ironically this was the 2.75 Euro billion or however you say

that acquisition that was what pushed embracer kind of over the edge into debt the first time that that kind of tipped the scales on all of this happening so as a reminder embracer has already laid off more than a thousand people they sold off saber interactive and gearbox all of this was also sparked by the collapse of the Savvy deal which was a $2 billion investment deal with so Chris talk to us a little bit more about these three groups and I can't wait I'm going to get my popcorn look I I'm really really really sorry Mr Adam teler um we have to cover embracer again uh unavoidable I don't want to actually I even struggled to get through the press release I was like much less than listening to this coverage it's just it's painful dude it is [ __ ] painful so basically what's happening is they're splitting it up to three publicly traded companies which first of all [ __ ] the [ __ ] off right I mean that it

shouldn't be one publicly traded company much less three but anyway all right moving on all right as Modi is the board game publisher with 14.8 billion Kona sorry copy stain and friends um a p a publishing entity which will focus on Indian doublea titles and freeto playay titles across PC and console with revenues around 10 billion I don't believe these ebit numbers so I'm not even going to quote them Middle Earth Enterprises and Friends focusing on development and Publishing of AAA titles which includes the aler of the Rings Two morer IPS with revenues of 14 billion that also includes their triaa Studios right like Crystal Dynamics with the creation of these separate three separate entities they will distribute shares in both asmod and Coffey stain and friends to existing shareholders of embracer so every shareholder of embracer will get uh those shares and then the existing entity will be basically the Middle Earth Enterprises so the triaa game developer does that all make sense so far I guess yeah all

right yeah as much as possible so I kind of decided that I was not going to cover this and I was going to let other people speak for me there's only so much I can like Pat myself on the back about being right about this that that I could do without sounding like an [ __ ] which I am an [ __ ] I know but um but the one Insight that I will use before I I go to others on the Internet is that um by separating asmod they're they were able to actually secure another [ __ ] round of financing of 9900 million euro to pay down their existing debt and this is likely impo impossible under the combined entity because they're not [ __ ] profitable right so because asmodi in sand alone is profitable it makes it easier for them to raise this level of debt um and the other thing is that this removes in the debt from or the majority of the debt from the other

two groups and puts it all under asmod which is the only really predictably profitable business although a business that doesn't grow at all but they sell [ __ ] board games right so it's like a it's like a 20% margin business something around those lines right so this likely actually and kind of has provided a little bit of evaluation uptick because separating them actually the value of the parts is greater than the value of the entire organization it also gives them the possibility of selling the the pieces right which may actually up unlock value because interested parties don't want the [ __ ] anything to do with goddamn as they don't want like savy doesn't want to own a [ __ ] board game business like that kind of thing right so okay and so anyway so that may actually help them sell that something like that to uh Savvy down the line and the other thing that you have to keep in mind is this is going to be years it's going to take years for this [ __ ] to happen this is not going to happen over night evidently and that is painful and so what I

promise to everyone on this podcast is that unless these guys get sold I'm not talking about it anymore oh I love that promise so Lars the CEO of embracer he gave an interview to to game industry. is and so just I think there's another one running today but uh I I wanted to pull a quote just to mainly just to set you off because it it's pretty funny so uh as a leader and an owner sometimes you need to take the blame and you need to be humble about if you've made mistakes and if you could have done something differently so when he asked what his mistakes were I would probably say listen to Eric Crest on all the past podcast but he didn't get into specifics instead referencing a long list of things he and embracer group could have done differently but standing by the company's overall strategy in any given moment you are making decisions you believe are right no [ __ ] of course you are uh when we were at the peak in 20 and 21

we made all those decisions to acquire or organically set up or invest and everyone was backing that I firmly believed in that the outcome because it takes a number of years to make games is different and it's painful and we need to adapt to it this is this is I I mean I don't know like it's not really saying you made a mistake it's saying what is the strategy I don't understand I don't either what is it he keeps referring to that okay that was just not a genuine statement like you cannot consolidate 133 studios in a few years like that's not the way the business works like anyone that's managed a studio for more than a couple years realizes that that's [ __ ] impossible that strategy does not make sense fundamentally in this business full stop right let's hear what some other people had to say I think they've heard from us enough so I think you went and found some good quotes here we go the kind of funny game kind of sum

sums it up pretty perfectly it's like embracer unbra embracer I like it I like it nice play on words that's true right Patrick from Goodbody now this is more of an academic ultimately the embracer buy and build model was a failure drove inefficiencies and competition between subsidiaries and is not overly surprising to see the Strategic shift post the group restructuring plans the pace of aggressive expansion through m&a was simply too fast and lack strategic cohesion and integration the split of the group is a natural consequence of these events the propositions that already had support and at discount evaluations and also left doubts the group ability to meet Financial commitments over the medium term yes that is that is the appropriate way of responding to this instead of what I do okay I think even internal folks have been showing support like on link or other places I I think even the folks

that work at these companies are like okay finally this is a good move for us Yos he had a very pleasant way of saying something in his way he's is he Swedish uh no dut dut clearly the Swedish gaming conglomerate was struggling in its form as a Federation of different projects and properties it means is that in every Studio has to help pay the debt the mothership has accumulated ated by making so many Acquisitions that's unsustainable it's a distraction from the creative process and destroys Capital assets like talent and Goodwill yeah I like that that was good and finally this one it's like taking a big turd and cutting it up into three smaller turds now I didn't say this and I think it's a bit childish but accurate so that's all for me I I swear that's all for me on a bracer until something gets right and I think it's definitely

possible that the Tria thing will get sold at one at some point so here's my thing like I I get all the ranting but like what does this mean for still front for MTG all these other rollup companies what is the strategy what was the thesis here to begin with like everyone has referred to like larsa's thesis and that he's like he's focused on the mission I I just don't understand what any of that is besides just dribble what what is the mission why do these things work I I don't get it they just arbitraging stuff like what was the strategy to begin with is that what they say it is yeah I always go back to the Jurassic Park quote I I don't even know if it's actually that relevant here but I'm going to say it again people were too focused on whether they could versus whether they should you know so when you have unlimited funds and unlimited money to do whatever the [ __ ] you wanted to it was like money was like coming off of trees then these type of things make sense because you could just it's like a ponzy it's like you just keep buying buying buying growing growing growing until that everyone realizes that you can't actually grow organically that's the whole point of this type of exercise

is to get a bunch of assets and grow organically but that's [ __ ] impossible when you're trying to manage 103 33 [ __ ] Studios you know it's impossible right to do that so the problem with stillfront embracer has always been the fact that they have no Central publishing no Central Tech that the problem is I believe in the citystate model but the state has to have the capability of publishing and managing and getting projects out on time you need that infrastructure to help support that and then amen yes and then then you start buying [ __ ] that's completely out of scope like Lord of the Rings and asmodi which never [ __ ] made sense from the ge-o which I've talked about in the podcast in million times and you're paying extraordinary prices um you know the valuations just went absolutely apeshit above what anybody else would pay and so anyway ultimately it just collapses upon itself when the money's not free anymore so does that mean still front's out the door then is that is that what you'd

predict as well and MTG I don't know much about MTG stillfront I think was a little bit more selective and a little bit smarter about how they invested but still they bought teams that were not capable of Building Products that's why they haven't grown organically forever right um so I think there's still problem I think the second question is why does it work for Acquisitions for big Publishers like EA you know I mean you could say that EA has been is a collection of Acquisitions it's because they buy these Acquisitions and integrate them over long periods of time like when we bought Maxis back in the day it took like four or five years to get a [ __ ] game out of these guys you know Sim City was the first game and then the Sims really started taking off right or dice it took forever Ian we got that thing for steel like I think it was a couple hundred million and and that thing took forever to get them and then DreamWorks was a medal of honor like and then then there's a ton of failure too but like yeah they it takes time to integrate these Studios takes time to

get them kind of on track making [ __ ] and and building organic growth yeah I I plus one that I I live through a lot of the you know the EA citystate model and I think that the challenge they had here is like Hey we're going to collect a bunch of these like Star athletes and put them on a team and just let them go and we're going to win well you can't actually do that you'll have a failure of a team unless you build a training facility and hire fancy chefs and get them all fancy coaches and build the support infrastructure to kind of make that work so it looks like the companies that you know fail to create this you know aren't able to set up that that Central service and love it or hate it uh this is what EA has always done really well and this is the 2ks you know the companies that bring everyone in set up the central service set up Central publishing that's how you can win at this not not I'm going to just buy a bunch of people you know and like you

said kind of like a a multi-level marketing scheme like a pyramid scheme and and just hope that that works if by letting them do what they already do you're not being more efficient in doing that 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 fer has created apps flyer for games to help you unlock your player's true LTV by providing a wealth of game measurement 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 Flyer's 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

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payments DDF or visit the link in this podcast description we're going to move on to a company that is actually trying to launch its first new game since 2018 so Squad Busters uh is out is it supercell's next big hit let me just do a quick recap before Phil jumps in so Squad Busters is in soft launch in Canada Denmark Spain Mexico Norway Sweden Finland and Singapore and it's actually topping the charts in all of the countries so as of yesterday um it was the number one app not just game but number one app which includes non-gaming apps in Canada Finland and Spain uh and it ranks inside the top five in all the remaining countries except for Mexico where it's at number 18 so as a reminder this game is a multiplayer Squad building action game I don't know what that means but you know Phil will tell you more uh and it features the characters from all of the supercell games so um I got a chance

to watch the launch trailer it's out um it's a really fun 2D animated so they that means they spent a little bit less money it's okay they're in soft launch so so I'll allow it and it was kind of like a Multiverse romp so it starts on the Heyday chicken which was just freaking brilliant the chicken with the eyes that kind of like goes in in in different directions and it really set the tone in the right way that this is kind of a funny cross brand Gathering of all of these different characters it it felt like every League of Legends Team Battle video I've ever seen you know characters that don't look like they should be teaming up or teaming up and then they battle another group of characters that looks like them so it's tough to recreate the wheel on that but from a supercell game I guess it's it's kind of cute so fun trailer um all right Phil you want to do the a little bit deeper dive on the game I will leave a four-line review there's so much we could talk about I'm sure we're not done talking about Squad Busters what I will

say first is find someone who loves uh haptic feedback as much as the designer of squad Busters does because oh my God your phone is going to light up uh someone just went Ham on the haptic feedback the next thing I'll say is that rarely have I had this much fun with a rogue like on mobile and this actually reminds me where Theory craft is going which is a supercell spin-off one of of one of the EPS of League just basically took the whole leadership team and is making um a battle royale right now which I think they just announced they're going into Alpha um but they're trying to do something with this MOA this kind of MOBA Battle Royale space Rogue likes we know are huge on Steam this whole idea of in round progression you're getting items you can do Theory crafting that's a word I've used with a bunch of clients recently Theory crafting there's a lot of fun like tantilizing possibilities you can have when it's combined with Randomness and this is supercell's I think look at taking a shot at that on mobile which is different than Clash mini Clash mini was taking a shot on a failed genre which was Auto chest which has never really sparked any besides China and for one skew underlords which was the valve

equivalent never really sparked in China so like hey let's go back to the supercell thesis of like taking Popular Mechanics and refining them refining them refining them the next thing I'll say is that the wind condition needs work I think this game still has like a lot to go in terms of development I heard that this was the one that was farthest along I think Ila had mentioned that once I really did not think that was the case playing through this I actually think this is going to take quite a bit of time to get to Global but there's so much to optimize here there's such a vast design space in what they've created and the last thing I'll say is like supercell just has like a best-in-class creative always always it is amazing to me how every time I pick up a supercell product there's a certain guarantee of quality and that hasn't gone away you know as they've scaled the soundtrack is different the announcer is incredible the gem collection sounds chess upgrades it is so much fun just to like touch a supercell product and that's never gone away and I'm just super happy to see that here certainly not the the last time we'll cover Squad Busters hopefully we can we can do a deeper dive but you know there there's something here but I to be honest with you I wasn't as convinced as I thought I would

be um you know with all the all the internal hype around this this product uh but I think there's so much to to optimize and they're going to have this team's going to have an absolute blast doing it Laura thoughts it's not in a country where I can download the game so I I basically watched I was watching the video um I I need to wait to play it all I can see is watch streamers try to play it and it's not the same as playing it yourself it looks very similar to the beta though so release in Australia supercell release in Australia you have to set up an account in Canada or something like that oh I need a bank account Canadian bank account yeah yeah yeah I I watched a bunch of streamers playing and it it is difficult to understand when you watching someone else because you have a you have a character and you collect your squad right you collect these characters that become your little army that run around you and when you watch that on a screen it is very difficult I don't don't even know how if I was controlling it how I know which one is me and my squad of I guess you're in the

middle of this circle that moves around uh and and Phil by the way fight for the golden spatula which is TFT in China is a top 10 Revenue driving skew even today so don't forget that but you are right from an autochess standpoint it's a oneand done Highlander the one to rule them all is is now the basically TFT in China all right anything else on Squad Busters before we move on Laura's going to take us through what uh dreams Royal match oh sorry Royal match Royal Kingdom Royal Kingdom is doing in their new soft launch update I was gonna okay since we're doing the video now I was going to try a screen share so you can see the game let's do it okay I hope this doesn't fall flat on its face but let's give it a go I'll give some context first and then I'll get really excited talking about it so dream games that we all know and love for Royal match they released an update to Royal Kingdom

which is what I have showing and I have to say what it did include a full reset of all progress from version one of the game so I did receive some rewards to ease the blow but I lost all my progress from the first version of Royal Kingdom there are only 100 Levels I almost threw my phone against the wall yesterday because I was like I'm going to get as far as I can and then I got stopped at 101 and thrown to the Champions Arena which is their end of content I mean looking at it if you played the the preion it does it looks almost the same now what's different are there's three things that I found that are different they changed the social aspect of the uh basically what the previous are the social attack levels and they they basically changed the look and feel um they removed the aspect of you're attacking your friends or another player and they put in basically an an MPC so now you are attacking an NPC and on top of that they change a little bit of the gameplay where it's not just you're attacking the castles you actually have obstacles in these levels so they they

Bas think of like an obstacle that you find in your level it's now I'll show a video of it but um it's now something that adds an element of of chance and a little bit more of a challenge to these dark King levels is what they're called they did simplify their economy mostly visually so they're hiding kind of XP outputs that they were showing before and they definitely reducing some of the rewards over play time so potions which you can see in the right hand corner that's your renovation resource and the previous version of the game tied it believe to win streak and so if you had a wi streak You' be earning more potions progressing fast at the game that seems to have been removed and then the last thing which I can show here is the world expansion in the first version of the game you kind of have this beautiful I mean I loved this I thought this was really different from what was in market for a renovator they added like a all these worlds you can now renovate so this is completely new instead of you know you're fixing your one Kingdom you have all of these kingdoms that you can

you can go and change and I think it adds a lot of visual variety and it also extends it absolutely extends their ability to progress and stay in the game so this is a a video recording of what the uh Kingdom level or dark King level looks like yeah so you can see here you have these little Golems that's the new obstacle that they added otherwise it's it's very this is almost like Clash Quest yeah looks like a super Vibes yeah so you basically attack them there's different sizes of Golems there I I imagine this has to be version one this has to be basically a very the first part of of what I hope to see are a lot more changes so minus this what you can see the games kind of look and feel the same the marketability is similar so I assume it's going to try as kind of the similar audience to Royal match so I couldn't I have to check

their UA creative unless they're kind of leaning into the attack levels I can't I didn't think this was a play to expand Their audience that was what uh was a question mark for me you don't think this SK is male this looks like more of a male more of attack puz RPG for sure yeah sure but this is level 10 right so it depends what they're using to bring players into the game so are they going to use the what you see is kind of like it depends how if they're going to just do the level ads which is you know Save the King no you have to do different creative exactly so that's what I need to take a look at is look at their creative and see if they're actually using these MPC levels to bring in a different audience otherwise if you look at the two games they're they're very very similar still they're operating the the number one game in the world right now which is yes unbelievable they they've grown it over time they have to see something to make this worth it cuz this just feels like a distraction to me like continue to operate your main product like what is it what is the vertical that they feel like they're adding here and I I'm with you I don't see it they're starting to play with more PVP Loops what we only have like

one success there that's that's kind of more of a muted what was it is the Israeli company um I forget what they're called a match Masters match Masters thank you yeah yes um it sounds like very light RPG mechanics I guess that that screams male and deeper arpo curves to me but they don't have characters this is not that PVP though I would have thought they would have gone into social that is a theme every I mean M did an every the the VC from um Laton Ventures was talking about he sees the trend of social is going to be the Cornerstone of games going forward and they ripped that out of this I love dream I this was a question I could not understand the play here except for the levels and that's going to Jen it's going to be your your team figuring out well how are we going to use this to bring in players yes so having worked on puzzle RPG category a lot they painted their themselves a little bit into a corner and that they're not enough of one or the other to be meaningful to a consumer base so

you either need to lean into the Casual aspect of it and like you said they already dominate in that casual aspect to attract a match player or you need to lean into the I'm a puzzle RPG with guilds and with you know all of the systems that you would get into that to attract a slightly different player which tends to be you know the the RPG player what you're showing me right now look like it isn't appealing to either one of those and uh looks tough so as your marketing partner on that I'd be like oh [ __ ] what what what I mean I guess I would lean into what you just showed which were kind of the puzzle RPG where you've got kind of Adventure on the top puzzle on the bottom kind of like a mullet um this game is the mullet of that that's what we're going to call this you know Royal Kingdom is the mullet of games right now so maybe we do a deep dive on it and spend a little bit more time but that's kind of my my first impression is H problem I'm hoping that I'm just going

to wait because there must be more coming there has to be more coming that's my hypothesis so dream let's see what else you got I want to see more in Royal Kingdom as I've said many times there seems to be an insatiable demand for match games so perhaps they can get another one going it never ends it never ends like it's unbelievable who would have thought like back of the day have bejweled you know on right that we would be that' be like billions with a bee spent on puzzle games batch games I know nuts multiple companies with multiple games making billions not even just one dominating them all right like this is not the Highlander type of category this is so many people there must be some kind of psychological thing right with [ __ ] puzzle games for for Americans or you know westerners right I mean you don't see this kind of [ __ ] activity in Asia right there's no puzzle games in

Japan right it's all in the US what are you talking about there's a ton of RPG ones Puzzles and Dragons sorry sorry you're right you're right right the Casual [ __ ] maybe you're right maybe it is maybe it is universal how about China you see anything in there an pop by happy elements it's 10 years old still doing incredibly well for all right maybe maybe everything else has it struggled to break in it's a human phenomenon that is related to puzzle it's crazy yeah I love it matching is fun matching is fun matching is tell your kids you know I think it goes back to the dopa hit right like you're getting dopa hit after dopa hit and this is why if I were to do a deep dive on Royal match with the psychologist that would be a fun project is it is so satisfying when you see you match something and then your entire thing like blows up and you send propellers everywhere it it just there's something that I think is is a psychological dopamine release that makes these things

work over and very manageable economy very manageable economy very sustainable everyone knows what the monetization Playbook looks like extra moves boosters done ship like not a lot of baggage you have to manage too keep these things going forever yeah remember when we T we were talking to Javier Javier about this in uh Istanbul just how but it is is it an easy I mean no of course not has so many dead bodies what was it the Temple Run match oh my God yeah oh yeah stories I have stories yeah F player fantasy right or brand fantasy I was on that project oh you were oh I'm so sorry that one that one got batted around quite a bit oh I I I I watched it from the the seat next to the person and yeah that was that was a painful one um okay we have one final story I think it's pretty quick since we talked about it earlier Licious knock it out Laura why don't you talk about Neil's article around celebrity Partnerships so this is specifically around Kim Kardashian so and then expands into celebrity

Partnerships but it's why did Kim Kardashian the game succeed when others fail trying to replicate that success so one of the top grossing games back in the 2010s was Kim Kardashian Hollywood it was pulled from the store back in January sensor AI reports about 252 million in lifetime Revenue but insiders reported over 600 million in lifetime Revenue it's a pretty it's a pretty big difference just a quick refresher so blo games made Stardom Hollywood in a publisher deal with glue so they wanted to beef up Organics to a game that was already showing probably pretty sticky some pretty good kpis so they decided to add an IP and who better than Kim Kardashian it was re-released then as a year later with Kim as the star character now she got very involved I think that is one of the key takeways from this she did voice recordings she gave ideas on story and then she allowed the game to follow her real life so if Kim was jet setting off to you know Paris fashion week they would match that in the game it was very much a partnership so Kim's social media

had like full support of this game so she was also using whatever all of her channels to uh promote it and this is what the question of the article is is celebrities were like oo that sounds great I want lots of money um so Taylor Swift Britney Spears Katy Perry Jason STM he had his own mobile game no he did not what did he do to shoot people it was a shooter it was a shooter oh my God all right even Kanye wanted to get in on the action but none of this really materialized or saw the same success and damasi is a couple ideas on why so he cites lacks the Restless celebrities kind of lacked the personal touch it sounded like uh in Taylor Swift's example she had her managers and agents kind of dealing with the game teams whereas Kim was fullon fullon involved there was one also story about how Nicki Minaj didn't want to put anything that was there was like some drama that she didn't want replicated in the game but

it was in the news that's how you get that's how you get people excited about this and as I read this article my first question was Jen has this wave of celebrity Partnerships has passed or are Studios picking the wrong celebrities so no what do you think we are in a different world and I think we covered when Kim Kardashian went away so if EA B glue and then sadly if your game ends up in EA M you know the chance of it dying is is is higher than it was if it was not at EA Mobile sadly um I know that they have new leadership on that team and I really hope that they can find a way to make some of these Pepe I know cres has given me to we like Pepe contest yeah Pepe's great guy yeah I I I just wish EA would figure out how to give it some sort of priority what do you want to say Chris I know you want to say something your face is if you're watching every single piece of evidence is showing that EA is doing the exact

opposite of what you're suggesting right so it's like oh I no I I am I am saying I I I wish they would I wish a hope is not a method wishing is not going to make it true like mobile is dead at EA basically is what's happened right and and they're going to focus on [ __ ] FIFA and they're gonna focus on I don't know that's it m you know like dude it's over right I mean you anybody from EA come call me and tell me how I am wrong on this like it's insane absolutely insane like insane like what's going on over there and it's it breaks my heart because there are still so many people there that are great people that have been there a long time that know how this works could actually do something but it's just not prioritized and I wish it was so I I say all this to say that EA let Kim cardashian game die and that makes me incredibly sad because this was the Shining Light of celebrity Integrations I don't think you can have a singular game with a singular

celebrity anymore we have move moved on to collaborations so if you think about you know remember when we were kid well Chris and I when we were kids there were only like a handful of TV stations and then there was cable and now you have hundreds of stations and now there's Tik Tok and people aren't even watching cable anymore so the same thing has happened with the idea of celebrities and games where Kim what the reason why this game was so successful is like you said it's the integration with her life it was the integration with her social she organically promoted this game as part and she was actively involved in it and that's what made it work so in today's world it just doesn't happen like that anymore and people's attention is across so many different things there is not one person you can go to and get that broad audience like you could with Kim Kardashian so collaborations inside of games with events is the way to go in fact I think Nicki Minaj even did a call of Duty collaboration I think she was running around with a pink gun and a pink outfit that's the future Brands and

celebrities are doing limited time events where you can everyone can participate for a limited time and still get a revenue bump but it doesn't have to be a a dedicated game and you see that with the you know the Island of Misfit Toys of all the past examples that you get you gave so my verdict is no more individual games I mean the only one who could probably pull it off would be Taylor Swift what they did in the past was like a social it like wasn't her music it was like a really poorly done it didn't live up to the fantasy of Taylor Swift so it was like I'm going to like be on her social media not I'm in her life seeing all the drama of how she writes songs and how she I'm not a Swifty I have to admit but what I hear from swifties is it is about how she authentically tells the story of her feelings that touches every person it at the core emotional experience and if if that was a game which I don't really think it is that's why I'm like if the only one who could be it would be her but I don't even think that's her I I

don't think you can you can do that with any singular celebrity anymore so please game teams go do limited time events all day long do that don't make a dedicated game with a singular celebrity that's my verdict I'm done all right all right we're going to wrap it up here thanks for the extra long episode no more embracer talk for a while and uh see you 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 fund.com slack and 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

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