TWIG #280 Game Industry Reports Galore

[Music] hello and welcome to Twig 280 where we read and distill all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno and today we have Philip black can never say your name right Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting hey hey Laura Toranto queen of product deconstructions and senior director of product at Big Fish games I love that I love that so much hi everyone and because it's Mayday and none of the Europeans are here we have a special guest returning star the origin story for me getting on this podcast Ethan Levy and you're not in stealth please yeah I I I figured I'm coming on the podcast my as well announce my

company and and what is that uh so I'm the CEO and co-founder of seun we are a ufn dedicated VCB studio and I've been building in unreal editor for fortnite for about a year at this point oh you're one of those people who actually is getting their hands dirty inside of ufn we need a whole segment on that uh next time it's really cool it's really fun I mean I don't mean to [ __ ] on my incredible monetization work and design work in the mobile space but it's a lot more fun to be making 3D single player and multiplayer content than like making uis for gotta packs I'm just having more fun moment to moment even if I used to make you know like or with the game you know millions and millions of dollars a month and uh so far our payouts in uh in ufn haven't rivaled that but it's incredibly fun and empowering to work an unreal editor for fortnite and and it's

funny I owe a lot to a deconstructor actually because my investors got introduced to me because of deconstructor Super Fan Paul bza I met my co-founder and CTO IBS Raga on the slack uh for deconstructor fund so if you've been dragging on joining the slack you absolutely should you could meet your next super best friend and work partner and uh yeah it's uh we're we're about a month away from releasing uh we've been uh bucking the trend the trend in ufn is like don't work on anything for more than uh two months cuz you never know what'll work we've been working on something since October uh with incredibly high production values I've spent well over half a million dollars on this game I want it to be the most content deep and highest budget ufn game on the market when it's released so unless we uh land a grant it's probably about a month more of development before we go live all so yeah we're we're say run and I've been making making games I

haven't just been um enjoying the the beaches of beautiful South Carolina for the past year so where did you come up with sayun as the name oh so um this man so my wall of inspiration behind me I've got a lot of vinyl records this is uh the album Let's Dance by David Bowie and his uh hit song one of his three best charting songs all time let's let's dance the line is if you say run I'll run with you and that I thought was the a great ethos for the type of games you should be making uh as a game company you know that kind of captures the spirit of play and playing together and then there's a deeper story about the production of the uh song and NY Rogers the uh one of the two founders of chic who produced that album and produced some of the biggest hits of all time um but I won't go into the longer story on this one you'll have to we we'll do that all fair okay next time next time we'll go deeper um and so when

are you launching again uh probably is a month is end of next month in success I'll be just posting a 4our long gameplay video on YouTube in LinkedIn that just shows ufn is capable of so much more than what you see if you launch unreal and play some of the top experience if you launch fortnite and play some of the top experiences today well perhaps we should do a product Deep dive where we talk about all of your experiences in that I think it's really interesting especially for you know a lot of folks who haven't you know tried that channel you know it is typical mobile or PC console development to get a little behind the scenes so maybe that's in our future yeah I'd love to cool all right so in this episode we're going to talk about all platforms so we're gon to do a little Deep dive into new's q1 blog uh which talked about uh revenue and engagement for PC and console games and then we're going to

shift to mobile liftoff has a new report that dug into casual mobile titles and a surprise midcore bullet point that I was really interested in hearing but first it wouldn't be our weekly podcast if we didn't talk about Fallout so I finally got to see Fallout and the TV show fall from Fallout The Fallout from Fallout yes I love the show and so somebody asked me okay now that you've seen both shows who would win in the postapocalyptic kind of Battle Royale between Last of Us and Fallout I still think it's last of us but it is now like a toe-to-toe match they they are very different shows but I loved it and I recommend this much much more than the most beautiful and most artistic you could hang it on your wall a still from this but it's still a flaming pile of dog [ __ ] that is Rebel Moon which I also watched this weekend what the hell I mean I actually I made Justice League toys with Zack

Snider I think 300 was amazing but oh what happened Laura did you see this I made the same mistake as you and I was like ooh part two as I was watching it all I could think of wait had you watched part one oh yeah part one had like a 31% Metacritic like third that was good enough that you're like I'll give number to a shot I was like maybe they got a little bit better it did not get better finish the job I got to finish you got to see the disaster of the train rack these are the words of childless people oh the first two hours were absolute dog [ __ ] I'll go see the next two hours and see if they got any better well so the other thing is I wanted to make sure to understand what these poor Netflix people were working on who are making a AAA game on this franchise because you know the entire world is being built out there I thought it was a mobile game is it a AAA game I thought stop I thought it was a nothing tripa can come out of this you can't shine a tur this there are two separate

I I think there is a mo Rebel Moon mobile game it might already be out separately Netflix is doing AAA games I don't know if it's I don't know if they've announced whether it's one of their IP um or whether it's something new yeah not sure I hope they learn from it like that all I could think of was watching it was everything just felt very trite the theme the dialogue so if you're going to invest in a game they need I hope I really hope they change all of it go read the what is it the Metacritic or not the Metacritic the IMDb reviews are rotten tomatoes and take some of the feedback it was it was a little bit it got a lot of uh Travel Town done during the two hours though a lot of merching it reminded me of Star Wars in in many ways but so George Lucas writes a great story but he can't write dialogue and so the reason why Star Wars was so great because his ex-wife actually wrote all the dialogue and the reason why all of the prequels sucked if you're old like us the new generation

actually likes the prequels but the reason why the prequel sucked is because they were divorced and she wasn't there to help them with the dialogue and then you get Anakin you're breaking my heart you get like the worst dialogue ever and this reminded me of Zack Snyder making the most beautiful movies and TV shows but needing someone to really help him with the story and not just having Exposition dumps okay anyway sorry got me fired up so the Fallout from Fallout is that it hit 65 million viewers 16 days after release it is uh Amazon Prime second most watched program and it beat the Lord of the Ring show that they spent like half a billion dollars on or something crazy so Phil did a trans media LinkedIn post which has been gaining a lot of attention and I may have been trolling you a little bit on that why don't you talk a little bit about that so I can poke at you nothing good starts with LinkedIn uh I would say my content is platform insensitive uh look I I I just think we've gotten a lot right wrong when it comes to the trans media story

and follow is being held as like some sort of success story and what I see as the trans media thesis is using different mediums to consistently expand and tell a story and ultimately you want to get simultaneous uplift on all of your other properties when you have this main property coming on and you know when I did a little bit of back of the envelope stuff I got maybe 40 50 million in incremental Revenue so it's not a huge part of the p&l considering they spent so much money on the series now of course Bethesda gets free money because that game revenue is going to go directly to them it doesn't have to go to Amazon Amazon's going to have their own p&l with their own benefits but Bethesda as a licensor is going to get not only the licensing fee which who knows what that is and how that's calculated but they're also going to get this game Revenue which is great it's great to be a lcy Jen you've pointed this out a bunch of times this is easy as signing a sheet of paper and letting someone go rip now unfortunately like things can actually hurt the brand right you can license out and say make a shitty Warcraft movie or maybe a shitty Grand mo movie or maybe you even make a

shitty Assassin's Creed movie so there are things that can harm the franchise but by and large like being a Lor is an incredible business to be in that to me is not transmo when I think about something like Disney zoka which was taking a story that was told in the animated series and translating it to live action or if I think about the Buffy comic book series which is actually Canon and established itself after the run of the Buffy TV show those things to me seem like more consistent with trans media but when it comes to just this line item of having simultaneous uplift in other properties coming from games when the TV show is airing when the movie is happening that to me is something that if Fallout is the ceiling then the expected outcome the expected uplift we can see from these kind of simultaneous entries is relatively low and ultimately I think that really harms the trans media thesis now that being said what I think this is about is just putting butts in seats this is about just building IP it's about franchises exactly what you've been talking about Jen this is about building franchises and franchises to me about building a built-in audience it's

not about the games having uplift it's about the IP putting butts and seats and having a built-in viewership audience those to me are different things let me push back on that 50 million is the ceiling because the ceiling could be higher with the different execution go to market strategy right in a world where Fallout 6 came out this week and they weren't just pointing people to Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 DLC as the things to monetize on like one Fallout 76 is not the highest monetization MMO so like you could just imagine if Warcraft was the biggest show and you have World of Warcraft Hearthstone and Ark light Rumble to point to just th those three properties might be higher monetizing so you might get more Revenue lift out of the success of the show but like if they do not sync up a season 3 release of the TV show with the release of Fallout 6 that's when we will see the ceiling of trans

media uh marketing lift and the amount of Revenue they'll get but I'm guessing you'd say to me well it's Fallout 5 was going to make a billion dollars how are we supposed to tease apart the Fallout 5 baked in success from the lift of having the third season of the TV show launch at the same time I would actually just point to like more empirical evidence because we've already tried this it was called the movie game tie in right and timing all those things together I agree with you could have a lot of like really fun interaction effects But ultimately you have to weigh that against the constraint of getting these things out on time and as we're going to talk about Star Wars Hunters I mean this game was delayed a month right it was supposed to be last month to tie in with the Star Wars holiday but Zinga ended up missing their ship date because there's all these really tough constraints you got to meet to time these things together and ultimately like that's costly too and we ultimately abandoned that strategy because we felt like it was too costly because game production is too unpredictable unlike a book or a comic book series or some other form of media so I actually think we're like uniquely ill equipped to pull this off so let's say it's at least four seasons Westworld

style you don't think they can sync up the release of season 4 with the release of the next game in the series like I'm giving them a couple years at this point Telltale couldn't even ship Seasons themselves right they were trying to do their own episodic content I think it's very hard to get this right like there's the mobile stuff like that to me would be a stronger case here is like what happens to all the Marvel mobile games when a movie comes out and everyone's doing live Ops right so if you go play Marvel Strike Force replay Marvel Puzzle Quest you're going to see doctor strange when the doctor strange movie is out that's to me is more effective strategy here than than trying to build out all these other things like that to me has some nice uplift to it but that to me is just licensing again like that that to me is not transm media that's not a lot of incremental Revenue Drive whether or not it's difficult to point out pull off obviously it's difficult to do the best job in the world of the trans media strategy all I'm saying is this is not the best job of the trans media strategy because there was not a new $7 game or not a new high monetizing live Ops MMO to point people to so I think the ceiling is much higher than this $50

million and Fallout can hit it with subsequent seasons of this hit show that's fair but I would still ask whether or not this is the ceiling or whether or not we think there's an expected outcome here because there's also a lot of stuff they did get right that I think would be unjust to pin on another project having to have as well like for instance they had a $250 million budget they were on Prime which has A2 million monthly active user distribution Network so they had like they had Jonathan Nolan who's like an incredible showrunner because there was like Twisted Metal right Twisted Metal was a TV show that came out and like everyone does does anyone remember the Twisted Metal TV show that came out last year it was on Paramount or got much better reviews than anyone would have thought totally but and it is getting a second season by the way barely to me is like the eighth wonder of the world that this thing is getting a second season but I would say like there is a lot of other pieces that Fallout did have that I think is very hard to expect if you're trying to think of a trans media franchise like getting Jonathan Nolan getting all these things together it's it's tough to pull this off of course

it's tough to pull Marvel off right like it's tough to pull off the Avengers 4 it is hard to be the best thing in the world that makes billions of dollars and and there are very few intellectual properties that even in the gaming space that have the longevity the fan base the critical Acclaim of Fallout like there are a lot of hit games Call of Duty probably can't do this I mean it's just like there what's the Call of Duty TV show but you know what can do it Dragon Age Mass Effect like those games have similar longevity fan bases balers gate at this point right like there are other game properties out there that I think have the raw materials to pull this off again but it's a rarified breed there's not a lot of Marios out there you do Mario you do Zelda now you're on to Ant-Man you're on to the punch out movie and the Kirby movie you know which which Ant-Man Ant-Man made a lot of money so like you can pull it off well let me also say uh Lisa Joy so

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are the team that made Westworld as well as this so I don't want to forget about uh I think it's his wife I think they are married I believe so and they did the peripheral which is fantastic based on one of my favorite authors yeah really good show it's a great re great watch also on on Amazon if I remember so the thing that I want I just want to go into and Ethan thank you for that perspective number one it's it's the long-term play You're Building an IP that will last and bring players in for the long term and Phil I think you said that I think the word trans media just needs to go away because all trans media means is that your IP goes across multiple media which is what a franchise is which is what Marvel which is what everyone does I think what happens is because the media or the IP starts in video games we are like oo it's trans media because now that video game IP is showing up in TV and comic books it's just it's where the IP is starting from we're we're changing

The Branding when this is just franchise planning like what I used to do at Disney what what all of the major entertainment companies do is you have an IP it tends to start in entertainment content and then goes everywhere else this happens to start in video games and the real thing goes back to timing as Crest was saying Ethan as you were saying I don't know who was the franchise manager on this clearly there is no franchise manager because the timing to lift all of the boat to see the revenue that you're looking for Phil is not there right now now what the good news is that they've now established that that is in fact the case and going forward hopefully they will time the next fallout Fallout 5 will come out with one of the seasons and maybe by then their idea was oh cuz wasn't there like LA and Vegas and Atlantic City and maybe by the time Fallout 5 comes up the it'll actually align better with the IP not sure all right that's our fall I'll talk thank you for hanging with us for

20 minutes so Shilling Laura do you want to do a little Shilling on our next episode for product Deep dive so Legend of mushroom the phenomenon that's come out of what is it Joy nice games we cover it with Ken Landon I have a whole bunch of mushroom puns in there but I'll save everyone I'll save everyone but yeah check it out on YouTube it's going to we'll put it up in the uh newsletter u in the coming weeks but I feel like we did Justice that game and really dug into what makes it tick come on one mushroom pun I'll I'll be Crest I'll yell at you go ahead just all right Ken Landon is such a Fung guy to chat with Fung he's a Fung that's great Laura that was awful what we have one week with no Corrections we have to get the poster on the wall it's mainly cuz Crest isn't here okay so moving on who knows what he

said that was wrong last week well yeah he wants to come back actually he's at uh epic this week but he wants to come back and talk a little bit about the a16z conversation we had um he got a little crap for that I which I don't think he shat on them at all but apparently they may have thought so all right let's go into a couple highle things going on in the world of gaming number one is Rip to BlizzCon for this year blizzard has decided not to hold BlizzCon in 2024 but they're planning various Global events including a celebration of warcraft's 30th anniversary and participation in Industry trade shows like Gamescom alongside launches such as World of Warcraft the war within in Diablo 4's vessel of hatred expansion so on the positive side of even though that's not going to be around um they announced uh blizzard announced last week that it's working with able Gamers on a new fundraiser which is really nice to hear

uh I got to go to BlizzCon in November it was really amazing and it looked really expensive so I can totally understand while with Microsoft coming in now owning them probably saw the p&l on that thing we're like why don't we take a break on that all right I need I need to do a call back to our previous segment here sorry you you're going to regret having me in as the backup to the backup host but um I know that World of Warcraft the movie was very kind of like a 50s in its rating probably made I want to say like in the $ 400 500 million do range not the billion dollars it was projected to but I would love to hear the argument for how that hurt the franchise right like it didn't reduce subscriptions to World of Warcraft or reduce the success of hearthstone because the movie wasn't as successful as people hoped there's no long-term harm from the movie not being great same for Assassin's Creed too right yeah Assassin's Creed still sells like a

gajillion units every what about the first shitty Mario liveaction movie yes there that one uh we can talk about the Monster Hunter movie I don't think these things are doing brand harm even uh if the Monster Hunter movie is not great Monster Hunter go is like crushing it it's still a giant franchise for Capcom do you remember ouie Bowl remember our famous our famous director talking you're talking about movies you did not enjoy that got panned by the critics that doesn't mean they did harm I think it made me allergic to Far Cry I can never look at Far Cry the same way again okay like did it hurt Far Cry 6's sales numbers doubtful show me the charts show me the data Phil next week I want to see the data that these movies with low metac critics did harm to these game franchises all I have is BLS I can I can send you some of those 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 getting to 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 worldclass backend game server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live Ops to wiing 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 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 detail insights on the full Digital customer Journey exciting times lie ahead a sensor Tower and data I enforces go to data. or sensor to.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the business now back to the episode all right so from uh trans media talk to collaboration talk I got a couple of things just to mention from baby shark to baby Godzilla well actually it's a chibi Godzilla to get technical but brawl Stars partners with the Godzilla franchise for a new event I also love what the community managers do with their brawl talk YouTube videos if you ever want to get a really good understanding of how they treat these events which are very deeply integrated into product they do just such a great job at that they're really camping and silly but I think it's a nice best practice practice of how to really

integrate brand IP into your event in a way that makes a ton of sense and they have merch Phil you should go buy it's like all like Japanese inspired chibi Godzilla brawlstar is really cool so keeping on the reptile talk Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are in stumble guys another you know uh collaboration going on and a really really strong trailer to announce that so talking a little bit about the other uh ugc platform Roblox Ethan uh this will be interesting if you can uh partner with Walmart to sell merch so Walmart thinks it's a good idea to let kids buy IRL items inside of Roblox parents everywhere Revolt I added that last part because as a step monster I would not want to have my kids have the ability to buy stuff through Roblox Walmart's discovered experience that's the name of it started out last year as a way for kids to buy virtual items for Roblox inside the game but today that

partnership is testing out an expanded pilot program that will allow teens to buy real life Goods stocked on digital shelves before they are shipped to your door available to Children 13 and up they made sure to say this in the release in the US only the latest addition to Walmart discovered is an IRL Commerce shop featuring items created by ugc creators including lots of people who have crazy names customers can browse and try on items inside virtual shops after which the game will open a browser window to Walmart's online store displayed on an in-game laptop in order to view and purchase physical items furthermore anyone who buys a real life world item from discovered will receive a free digital twin so they can have a matching virtual representation of what they've purchased so you have a IRL and a virtual item of the same item some examples of the first products are dual

IRL and virtual treatment of a crochet bag from No Boundaries and some other stuff like headphones and a steel tumbler like what 13-year-old wants a steel tumbler have you followed the whole Stanley Cup Trend everyone wants a steel Tumblr no no my eight-year-old has one but she's got an offbrand she doesn't have a Stanley oh Phil's drinking from one right now Phil did you mug someone at a Starbucks for a limited edition Stanley Cup you seem like someone who's capable of violence thought you meant like this overflow from girlfriend St C Mark thought too yes Jen the sporty one of the group could not divorce Stanley Cup I was like from hockey oh that big Tumblr Oh I thought you yeah the H I have friends that like hockey and I'm not from Texas I don't even know what ice and hockey are but okay yes yes those big mug things oh understood okay that's what they meant but it says like towel stainless it wasn't the Stanley one one so that's why I was confused okay sorry

Laur go ahead not Stanley but that the whole there's a huge trend for those types of mugar this is a little slightly off topic but uh someone on Tik Tok posted about there very sadly their car caught on fire whole car just disappeared the only thing that was still remaining was the Stanley mug and then it's since taken off and it's actually would maybe a couple months ago there was a there's a huge trend on Tik Tok of everyone uh basically creating content around them and Stanley mug Phil you'd fit in perfectly it's misleading to say they're selling things in Roblox they're advertising things in Roblox and they link you to a website so I'm looking at R monitor um run by our friends at gamef and it looks like this Walmart discovered was released um in the past two weeks or maybe that's what the data I have ACC I'm not an expert at this website but let's say you're looking at about 15K visits to Walmart discovered a day so far in two weeks like just

because you put something in Roblox doesn't mean it gets a lot of traffic and then if we're doing 15,000 visits a day let's assume we get 1% of these people to open the web browser so what we're looking at 150 visits to a website per day I this isn't this isn't going to generate Monumental sales the question you know this seems like an experiment and a question is whether or not they're creating long-term Walmart Affinity brand marketing something something Jen you're kind of more your realm like long-term customer attachment I've turned like Walmart is great I I actually with the big family we shop at Target we shop at Walmart we shop at Costco and and once I got over myself Walmart sells some quality groceries those great value items so that's what they need to sell is the Great Value tortillas inside of Roblox but the effectiveness of driving traffic to Walmart discovered inside a Roblox is

like if they don't have something great for people to do that you know I don't think this going to generate a lot of traffic I can't even use my Roo where's my Roo I should be able to spend and I I I say that kind of like somewhat half jokingly but like 30% of Roo are purchased with gift cards um I remember there's a report that came out I remember novic David Taylor put the numbers together a while back but like this would also be a nice way for me to get access to things on Walmart.com with a physical Pur and without needing to have a credit card like where's all that stuff like I'd love to see that stuff come into the app because you're right this is just basically a linkout to website but I do get the item virtually that's kind of fun that is cool that could mean something yeah you know as a marketer the idea that you get a digital twin so you are really perpetuating the IRL to Virtual connectivity which is you know something that I think gen Alpha is really looking for or and that's what this is testing that this is test testing you know how can we start to

create an expectation that virtual and IRL come together especially inside of games like Roblox so while it's very low uh engagement right now I think Walmart has had some other engagements in Roblox in the past where I think they've seen a lot of traffic so I think they just need to they just need to get the word out it just launched so let's see let's just keep an eye on that they I remember in was it paradot or parido from Niantic they did an in-game integration with Amazon where you could buy merch from the game actually inside of the game itself which again super interesting not a great game not a great IP to test that out in in an unproven IP but imagine if you're in a well-known game and you've got that you know inside the game Commerce link easily giving access to players to be able to go deeper inside of your franchise but you don't have intent to purchase right so if you think about like design home remember all those other design games like you had intent

to purchase there which was super super nice and I actually remember them having some decent numbers linking out to like physical merch but like here do you really have the intent to purchase this is why like Instagram does so much better than like you know Twitter Twitter's so text based and Instagram's So photob based I think your intent to purchase is much higher maybe I mean that's a good question for kids though I mean for the younger audience who it's all about showcasing your identity you know is this now a transition from your virtual identity to your real identity that you can have inside of your game I don't know I I think virtual Stanley Cup maybe maybe I feel like I'm a little bit more bullish on this I think they're going where the eyeballs are I'm with Ethan this is a test and to me this is they're testing to see what the is this the start of the wall metaverse is this something sron is dedicated to ufn but if Walmart wants to make the Great Value tortilla challenge inside of Roblox they know who to come to I'm the number one

great value flower tortilla fan and I will make you a tower of tortillas inside a Roblox I'll I'll learn Rose Studio just for this joke it'll be amazing all right so if somebody wants to invest in do m&a and Ethan why don't you take us through what other people are investing in sorry I didn't realize that when I came back you guys have changed up the format on me things are so organized now I didn't realize I had to carry a segment I thought I was just coming to make fun of that's fun too I'm here for that conspicuous sip from the Stanley Cup so you know I think everybody was uh scared off of of m&a news after the bombshell embracer story last week there wasn't too much going on there was some web 3 stuff that not too interesting 10cent upt it stake in remedy from 5 to 14% uh I wish Crest was here just to understand the Dynamics of that a little

bit more because when you see a press release like that the question is like did remedy get any money from this were they buying ownership from the remedy Treasury and thus this is money to help uh make games or did remedy issue New Stock and sell it to tensent and that you know is like a way of publishing uh max pain 4 or control 3 or whatever or did they just buy it from some other institution so that's more cress's bag maybe he can illuminate that in the future but really the one most interesting piece of m&a news to me this one's m&a adjacent that Griffin gaming Partners announced today that it has welcomed Emily Wang as a partner in Chief Operating Officer as part of her new role she'll be overseeing Griffin's interests in mergers Acquisitions and financing so Griffin like a16z and makers this is you know a mega fund with hundreds of millions of dollars to deploy in the gaming space and um I've only heard wonderful things about Emily from uh Sarah fukes who I uh interviewed for the tokenomics podcast on

deconstructor fund back when I was still doing that I don't know reading the tea leaves this sounds like maybe an expansion of the Griffin games mandate as it looks for how it deploys um those dollars but that's just me guessing again Crest might know more about um what the role someone like this would have inside an organization like Griffin would be awesome so more women in leadership positions on the investing side uh love seeing that Jen I don't see see gender I just see someone who controls a giant bank account I see both um all I see is dollars and and needing to fund a p&l oh this is what this is why we have some women on the podcast again thanks to you is that uh we we like I don't see gender I just see people to make fun of you're an equal opportunity I'm an equal opportunity offender I don't think it's quite trolling yet I mean I think with Phil I probably tip over into trolling you're fine you're fine yeah

all right Laura take us through the next section all right layoffs employment enclosures so these are a courtesy of Neil long at mobile gamer. Biz first one Medicore developer of merge Mansion one of the first grid merge games in the market I think it was the first grid merge game just hired X King VP David telenius as their new general manager David worked as VP and head of production for Candy Crush Soda previously uh he actually also worked on Candy Crush original great guy super smart I hope to see a lot of great things grow from merge mansion and metacore super tell CEO and co-founder ilka has been added to Lego's board of directors Lego has also added former YouTube Netflix and Uber exact eie adoi to its board which now consists of eight members including five independent non-executive directors I have a question or more of amusing does this mean that ilka now can see into the Lego fortnite epic deal right so when do you

refuse yourself if you get to see all of LEGO's you know other video game deal and there are many right there are there's recused from what this isn't a government this is a company but he's a board member so he's going to see all of this and be like oo I get all this data I can take back to supercell now but again this this isn't the Supreme Court what is he supposed to recuse himself from this is this is business business is war and he just got access to intelligence I me are usually friendship chains they're usually friendship chains anyway everyone's sitting on everyone else's board it's just it's a nice handshake it's truce okay well good for him that's why Laura is on my board she's the queen yes sign me up sign me up I'll make you a non-executive independent director I actually don't have the power to do that no no it's a non-executive independent Queen yes there we go Monarch Monarch all right

back to Employments closures Etc Fortis the developer and publisher has bolstered its executive team with a number of new additions Kimberly Corbet has come on as Chief publishing officer having worked previously at Warner Brothers Zinga and Kabam she's going to be heading up user acquisition life cycle and Market intelligence and then one update from pocketgamer.biz a little bit more of a sad news Vancouver BAS mobile games developer I thinking ape has laid off an undisclosed number of employees across uh all departments thinking ape is known for strategy games so they've made Kingdom of heckfire Kingdoms At War and witch Arana all right let's get into games Squad Busters what's going on with Squad Busters boy it is actually happening I I never thought I would see the day but supercell well no that's that's not fair but supercell's launching another game and not only are they launching another game it's the one we were just talking about it's Squad Busters it's Global on May 29th Jen what happened oh yeah so

first of all we they we just talked about them being in soft launch so this is a little bit crazy for it to be just a month later so I got a push notification on my iPhone I'm an iPhone user to pre the game which I did of course and this has to be some of the best marketing of all time like this feature where a push note goes out to basically everyone is I've only seen this in very very rare occasions where Apple pulls this lever because it can be annoying to players but the conversion on this has got to be huge and I don't know I like a month after soft launch it must be going really well Phil you said last week you're like oh they're going to need some time for this to bake in the oven I stand by that we're definitely going to be doing a podcast a separate podcast just dedicated to Squad Busters of course it's a super cell title who doesn't want to do a spin-off podcast and I think we're going to be bringing someone else on board too but yeah there's a lot to talk about with this one it's not a part of the the normal supercell strategy but then again they're rewriting their own book um and

I think this is another chapter all right I heard a lot of chatter that it's very pay to win is like the new chatter about it certainly so um it definitely pushes the boundaries update on the switch 2 which isn't going to be pushing the boundaries the new hardware details for Nintendo successor title appear to have been leaked the post has since been removed it was on Facebook and according to the report the Pro Controller as well as the joycon controllers and the rumble are going to be supported so there's going to be backwards compatibility there's going to be a magnetic horizontal docking system thank God as someone who thinks they're usually quite trash uh there's of course going to be backward compatibility in terms of the games and the screen is going to be a big upgrade we're going to it looks like 1020 or 1080p versus the 720p that's on the platform right now it's happening finally maybe the quarterly numbers for uh the game industry will look better invest Game and video game insights has

released a new graph or at least part of their research report looking at both ablea and AAA revenues on Steam year-over-year and it looks like AAA is up despite being unsustainable it added 400 million for AAA and they added 800 million for able a The gry Zone Warfare game which has been hyped on Steam this is a Early Access realistic military shooter looks like it has come out and it's picking up a little bit of steam this was a seamless backend launch with our partner her laabs which did a lot of their backend support Star Wars hunters from Zinga which we were talking about is coming out on June 4th missing the very popular May 4th date as we were talking about hard to get the timing right but somebody is getting the timing right fortnite oh they're still doing Star Wars stuff the trailer says May 3rd so leading into May the 4th be with you if anyone didn't know that I mean that's why May the 4th with you May 4th it's the day before Cinco Deo which is the

other obvious holiday date but so in fortnite Star Wars is hitting everything it's hitting Lego it's hitting the concert it's hitting regular fortnite so um massive massive Star Wars will take over actually Ethan you're not launched yet but I was going to say it should take over your stuff too but so I mean the thing is I don't know what they're going to do Beyond surfacing skins in the store but even just surfacing skins in the store that you've already developed that alone is part of making it Star Wars branding bringing Star Wars branding into the game and then you can run um quests you can run like an independent battle pass on and stuff but like because they have so many different IPS in the game they can basically support any of their IPs media launches or draft off of it by putting the skins in the store for a limited time and doing like a Star Wars takeover teenage M Ninja Turtle take over or Transformers takeover or Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen I mean they

have every like nerd IP so that this isn't e much easier lift than launching a new AAA game or a new free-to-play game that is on a console you've never supported as a company before yeah definitely I think the very very new piece is that you can have a lightsaber and the Lego fortnite version like that's very yeah it's very interesting with um releasing the Lego and if you think that they doubled their it might not be an exact doubling but like a doubling of the cost of liveop support of new cosmetic items because the models that are used in fortnite third person shooter are clearly not the models used in the Lego mode and they had to backfill years and years of skins for the Lego mode and then also on their content treadmill now every time they release a new skin you know they have to choose whether or not to also build Lego versions of it which is um it's tough

I'm fascinated to know if you buy Luke Skywalker or whatever character you unlock you get both it unlocks all of them does it unlock a car I don't think there are skins for cars I haven't i' I've been very focused on my game not on the racing one yet but I don't know how your Cosmetics appear inside of the racing Mode still that's pretty cool though that you you you know buy one get one free in a sense that you you unlock a character and an IP in the game not just one of the modes so that's kind of cool yeah 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 under 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 exol's paystation in action visit ex. proo payments DDF or visit the link in this podcast description the me 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 players'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

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 abser for games today and Unleash Your game's true potential apps flyer for games supercharging the gaming landscape all right what else we got of course you brought me back so I have to talk about spicy anime girls right is that is that the Mandate like Phil right yeah it's kind of my MO is that I'm willing to talk about um spicy anime girls and their appeal to uh dorks on the internet like me um so this is according to a tweet by in Insider leaker zubek Stellar blade showing extremely strong performance should easily hit 1 million copies sold

in 24 hours so this is a PS5 exclusive it's 70 bucks it's got an 82 Metacritic which means it's in the zone where I'm like I'm almost definitely going to buy it and if you're into anime fan service girls it's got incredible key Ard and trailers right I'm on IGN all the time it's been top of the page at IGN with a lot of stories in the weeks leading up to the launch and this is the uh uh same Studio shift up that made the mobile fan service Juggernaut known as Nik goddess of Victory you've doubtlessly uh seen ads for that that game is a just a masterpiece of pairing fan service with gacha sensor Tower announced it hitting $600 million in Revenue in November of 23 and and Phil shared some charts it's probably up another $60 million in Revenue maybe I mean I don't know what their web shop business is but it's probably pretty robust so talk about trans media they have learned how to take the appeal of

anime butts and monetize them on different consoles with different business models they've knocked it out of the park on mobile they're knocking it out of the park on PS5 and they know what a portion of the audience wants they want fan service anime girls they want lured camera angles they want revealing outfits the one the one thing I like on this one if you put on the most fanservicey skin the skin suit skin kind of reminiscent of of Ghost in the Shell they actually debuff your character so like if you want your character to look her sexiest or her most revealing I I think I actually think some of the other skins are much more visually appealing I don't think the skin suit is that uh visually appealing compared to some of the other outfits are really awesome if you want to put on the spiciest skin they make the game harder for you which I I think is funny and I've seen actually um I remember that in the Persona dancing games if you put the characters um in the swimsuits they both have voice over

that like tells you how much they don't like it and they uh make the game harder so like they're like we'll tax you a little bit if you want to put in swimsuit creepy [ __ ] and stare at digital your words not mine I I will absolutely own those words for so there was a weird controversy on this one too where apparently there was an update to this game and the players thought thought that they may have made some of these really re revealing skins less revealing and and so they thought that was like censorship by is that Nik or is that uh Stell blade St blade so the developer came out and I I actually watched this video of him being interviewed on some sort of panel and he's like no that didn't happen what you see is our intent this is what it is but players w aren't believing it they're out there talking about censorship that Sony is censoring this game and so it's

just really interesting that you know people are trying to bring a a censorship argument into please give us more naked women in our video games uh as a woman in games always fascinates me that this is part of what we have to deal with as a woman in games be prepared to be horrified and disturbed by what the combination of AI generated assets and user generated content brings to the video game industry more Assets Now that is the pun of the show right there that's the one oh Laura what else you got I was just gonna say I'm just glad that finally at least this the armor and the suit that it's more representative of reality in of reality I mean unless that suit skin is made of like dragon scale titanium Platinum thinness ironed by the Forge maker of whatever it doesn't make sense so oh the forge maker of galatron

of course that that that's it's both translucent and uh impervious to all kinetic damage have you seen uh you know I think perhaps the stupidest fan service has to go to silent in Metal Gear Solid 5 that the reason she's a sniper in a bikini is because of some scientific experiment where she breathes through her skin that's the lore reason for why she is sniping in a bikini uh I'm not a big like other people love kajima I find it indecipherable and weird but just had to bring that one up okay moving on we're gonna talk about uh newu so our friends at newu have released a q1 2024 us and Europe PC and console blog post so uh pulled out a few highlights that I thought were interesting we've been talking a little bit about hell divers we we had the cirana bullet point last week and so here it's it's newu saying

they continue to see ma increases after its amazing release in February Diablo 4 returns to the top 20 after a 50% price cut at the end of March sending player count soaring f123 and sefue make appearances on PlayStation's top 20 due to inclusion on Playstation Essentials and power world is showing signs of slowing after no new content released in March Prince speach Showtime premieres at uh number 20 for switch I think Phil you had talked about uh po world not seeing a lot of updates I think this is the challenge when you've got you know such a small developer and keeping live service going right like they they were probably caught off guard and like holy [ __ ] we had no idea I mean it doesn't need to right they've already made their bank I mean this is why you go PR instead of free to play and why I think many teams are being like okay maybe we're not geared up to do live service we're not geared up to crawl back LTV over a number of years and that's okay

that's a good realization to have it's not appropriate for everyone also on the blog post Dragons Dogma 2 premieres above EA fc24 for second on overall Revenue WWE 2K and MLB the Show debut at 5 and 13 respectively Diablo 4 sees their revenue boost alongside engagement and Destiny reappears on the top 20 as it's now included on PlayStation Essentials Dragon's Dogma 2 I mean that is uh uh quite a performance from that game because the the initial one didn't exactly set the world on fire and if you look at the history of games I think mir's Edge comes to mind as a game that was like well regarded cult classic didn't sell that well and then they said but people love this game we have to give it a sequel and then you know like it it again didn't hit the mark um despite being a really fantastic and Innovative and fun game and so you wouldn't expect a game like Dragon's Dogma this would be the

equivalent really similar to if they did like an a sequel to kingdoms of amalar right I think there are plenty of people out there who are probably like what I can't was that the Kurt Shilling MMO thing in the mon or like dragon's dog I think is kind of in cult classic type status where it wasn't a massive hit for Capcom and so it's almost surprising that they did this big budget sequel to it so many years later if I had to guess uh I would guess that the combination of remasters and then giveaways through like I know I have't on PlayStation Plus for being free I'm willing to bet it's been free on other free game services or subscription Services before and so I think it like built up name recognition in a surprising way over time but from the reviews a great Sequel and the last point I had Rainbow 6 Siege sees renewed Revenue growth after a Content update and release of the Year n roadmap for 2024 so again there are lots of games

that are doing well on the charts that have been out for a long time seeing live service updates and they keep going all right moving on to Mobile so liftoff who owns game Refinery by the way if you have ever used that platform um I'm actually a fan of that platform and the that team they do a really nice job of taking all of the data and and matching it to player motivations archetypes and and features so anyway liftoff bought them a few years ago and they released a report it's called the 2020 casual gaming apps report it's for free so go ahead and and download that if you would like um the data source is January of 2023 to 2024 so a Year's worth of data and um here's a few things that I thought were really interesting and I I teased this one earlier so liftoff does ADS and then gamer finery is kind of like a you know looks at all of the the features and how all of the data flows through so it's a little bit

of a of a fuller picture ads in casual games so if you see an ad in casual game drove 74% of midcore mobile game installs on their platform so this was really interesting and and Laura maybe it goes to our white out Survival how we were seeing all those hyper casual inspired snow covered ads for white out survival which is the 4X midcore if not hardcore strategy game that's how they're I think they're they're doing it and so if you're a midcore game perhaps advertising in a casual game is not a bad not that you necessarily get that choice when you do that but thought that was really interesting additionally puzzle games emerg as a significant driver of casual game installs contributing to 37% of total installs not rocket science on that one since puzzle is is so massive uh progress Rive offers gain traction so this is that idea that you

unlock one offer and then you get uh like 10 things for free afterwards that's kind of a new feature around 70% of the top 25 casual games in the US now utilize this feature surge in 3D match games so titles like triple match 3D and tile match 3D have experienced significant growth with a 41% surge you know this obviously makes sense as well we know that Candy Crush is working on a match 3 game it's in soft launch right Laura you know more about this than me I don't know if it's in soft launch I wouldn't call it that I think it was in just uh like a market validation test to see if there's product Market fit and if the IP the brand can basically go across different gaming types it's also what I'm seeing used in ads a lot speaking of ads a little bit earlier that uh the match 3D kind of um physics based pick from a pile of crap ad seems to be working really well and then the final one that I thought was it's interesting coming from liftoff Embrace of external

web stores casual games increasingly leverage external web stores to enhance player engagement and offer value this approach previously common among mtor titles allows developers to offer exclusive rewards value bundles and dedicated loyalty programs directly to players so uh they are picking up a trend of this not only being uh midcore Laura what else did you see in here okay so I going through this report I read the first but it was all about admon and I was like H okay and then the second half which was the end they actually broke down some of the main monetization features in casual games which I thought was super interesting and I wanted to just talk about two of them the first one is pick one bundles I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't seen this before but it went live um and I I started to dig into the games that they featured and I think they featured three games I looked at Monopoly Go and Frozen City so they have this new monetization feature called pick one bundles it was very reminiscent

of like signing up for a digital ad subscription where you can get you have a choice of three but the one they really want you to do is the most attractive offer so Monopoly go after scrolling through figuring out when it went live it was early March March 4th and then in Frozen City it went live on March 29th and I was curious to see how it did neither of the games had a huge spike in Revenue Frozen City definitely did not Monopoly go saw modest jump but I mean this is this is kind of doing pre-post relase analysis and my first question is if this saw a hangover effect to Monopoly go given this offer is a lot more generous than the current $4.99 and 9.99 USD bundles you get a lot more value than that $9.99 bundle and it's priced at $5.99 making it a really good deal and I'm curious to see how they balance it because I imagine it would decrease the frequency at which you need to Buy in that game so super interesting I'd keep an eye on it this

is early machine Zone Playbook is the stepup offer system we actually did an experiment on this on WWE weren't able to show any uplift it just live Ops is always like a lot of busy work and I'm always wondering what the theory is here like okay you've figured out the the 100 millionth way to run a sale tell me that that increases long run revenue and increases long run Revenue above and beyond not just a control group which is no sale but also what is your next best sale strategy because it takes effort and capital to come up with strategies like this and I almost never see that be the case there is a fantastic Julian run paper who I know you worked with at wuga who did some experimentation on discounting was able to show long run uplift I'd love to see at least people take his paper and how he implemented sales and run those consistently but I'm very skeptical of scale sales in Match 3 because engagement and monetization are tied one another and so you can't just sit there and sync out let's say $300 in one sitting like you can in Monopoly go you can just hit that multiplier those bonus rolls go away when you're thinking

about like a match game that hard currency is sunk over time and extra moves and boosters mostly an extra moves and when those two things are tied I think the hangover effect is much stronger the the negative effect of sales are much more consistent whereas I think you see the long run uplift when you have higher spin velocity at least that would be my thesis here but I would love to see live Ops teams hold themselves to Long Run holdout groups and actually see whether or not you know all this kit Kaboodle and dancing around this Tom Foolery actually does anything and I you know I I very rarely see it be the case when I work with teams that they have long run holdout groups there is definitely for match three games 100% you need to do your Sal super carefully because there's a hangover effect if you if you give away too much then people just stop buying because they're stocked you need to make sure then your levels are balanced appropriately to be able to drain the only other thing I want to add so the progressive offers I didn't know this was first introduced by Royal match in June 2021 and now I thought it was interesting I feel like a Royal match is becoming the Playbook feature generator

for the Casual space I mean they already were for the engine but the more and more I see this the more games for if you're making a puzzle game it's almost like you're you're you need to clone as much as you can of Royal match the only thing that wasn't picked up and that Royal match has not done but I've been replaying a lot of candy crushed soda and original and one new TR I'm curious to see if this will be picked up as well so endgame purchase when you run out of moves that is super attractive that's where a lot of people spend when you fail in Candy Crush every uh sequential fail basically throws extra moves at you usually you start with five like buy this five extra moves for every subsequent fail it goes from five to 25 to 35 to 45 extra moves on that first um endgame out of moves offer does the price stay the same or does the price increase stays the same really just getting yeah the price per move is going

down with every time you fail H it's a sunk cost it's a sunk C I mean this this is really intelligent it's I'm sure it works incredibly well because likee cuz it's you get in that zone of like I'm so close and then you buy it and then it fails and you would normally go I'm so close but five moves didn't do it oh 10 moves or do it like it's uh so why not increase price then right if I'm getting Z wouldn't I be less price sensitive rather than more I think that maintaining the price convinces you it's a good deal instead of doing what's in your best interest which is to quit and not spend any money because they're almost like they're anchoring around like a nominal USD value while increasing moves so you're like oh my God this is such a better deal yeah I have to I get 45 moves for $1 I have to I can't give up now whereas if the price went up you would go these [ __ ] are gou in me for every peppermint in my pocket what Royal match does Royal match

still does the old school so yeah you you're you're charge double so as somebody who played a Royal match this weekend it's like 900 coins the first five moves and then it doubles it to like 1,800 coins for five more moves for the second EGP so that's in the same level this is different that's with when you're still in that one game round this is I've played the level I've said no to the first I failed I said No I don't want moves for 10 gold borrows or 900 coins I play the level again start over the next time instead of I I I fail again now instead of five moves 10 gold pars 900 coins whatever I'm offered 25 so it's the next full game round oh that's new that's very okay that's quite brilliant it's it's absolutely brilliant so I was I I take back what I was saying before I misunderstood it It's Tricky it's even more brilliant though it's even more brilliant it's radically different because I would so am I betting on what I think the next difficulty of the level is going to be

so if I think the next level is going to be rather hard like it's a hard level then I'm more likely to buy the extra moves because I know I'm going to need them I'm going to go up against that cap right it's extra moov to finish the level you're on right do they do they carry over no carry over it's for that level so this is they're not making the level easier for you on repeated play they're making it cheaper to try more so every time you lose same level new cheaper cost per move it's a cheaper cost per move it's that's bril W okay it's not really extension it's a refresh of the same level after you've yeah yes so it's so they've probably observed the behavior that when you lose a level you try over and over again and there's probably everybody kind of exist it's almost like personalizing how much you're willing to spend to to get over the hump in a way in a way I think they see more value in players completing aggression of multiple levels than being stuck on one level yeah well I thought I thought Royal match did this at one

point very early on where it was like every X number of fails they increase the move limit by five moves so you can continue extend it which which also connects lives to monetization for the first time right because you just sit there and you just fail really really quickly you get those five extra move move spaces which is interesting too but I I think I think they moved away from that went to something more Dynamic this is cool this is cool stuff you know hopefully like someone can report back on the success of this will spread like wildfire right if this is successful things always do in match so speaking of Royal match the one thing I wanted to bring up because you had just said everyone copies Royal match I feel like for the first time I saw Royal match copying everybody else and so every game has this card collection mechanic right which is secondary collection mechanic that makes you continue to play to collect all the cards each different category once you fill a category you get a certain reward you see this in the merge games especially Travel Town a ton and they

also have these collections done by season so if you don't collect all the cards by the end of the season by the end of that season you're like spending they try to complete those cards so this weekend um they actually rebooted this system to looks like Royal match is now matching what travel town and these other games are doing and adding a trading mechanic where you can for the first time it sounds like you can trade cards with your friends so this had never really existed unless I was using this feature wrong I don't think so I a power player on the weekends this is brilliant because I think with these card mechanics and this is just my personal message to everyone do not make me go to your [ __ ] Discord and your Facebook group to trade the cards give me the way to do that inside of the game how else am I supposed to tell you about my web shop if I don't force you to go to my Discord have you heard about my web shop okay okay crack dealers you should check it out you're offers my website

however however um not everyone's going to convert on a web shop wouldn't you convert through an IAP inside of your game if you gave people a reason to STI around longer so when Laura and I talked about Township you know this was the idea there which is they created all these other Mame experiences that would keep you sucked into the game so why not build in these trading mechanics that allow you to stay in the game longer you get your reward now you play a little bit longer I get the web shop you know crack pedaling but this also seems like a great product marketing hook to bring this all in together that would fulfill the need state of especially for those who are motivated by completing collections because not only are you getting the puzzle motivation and the skill around that you're getting the motivations for the the folks who want to complete collections quick question how do I trade with somebody through Discord blockchain baby like no no have you have you done the process on any of

these I haven't done cuz I don't want to I don't want to go to Discord and try to talk to some random stranger about like hey hey you want my uh my soccer Card wait okay but how sorry how does it express in-game is there a system where you can freely send cards to anyone in in-game messaging and you just need to know their username in Travel Town whoever your friends with you can select the cards that you want to trade select your friend and then it'll trade the card but you have to be friends with them so you're going to Discord to find people to add to your friends list specifically to make the trade using the in-game interface okay so here's here's a production argument for you making a Open Marketplace trading user interface is a high effort feature for a very niche part of the audience and therefore by offloading the work to people doing

it on Discord you are not wasting a bunch of time building what is a very complex user interface for just like the smallest part of your audience who cares about trading the games to each other I'm not sure this is the smallest part of the audience I think this is one of the Monopoly go has 700,000 Discord members who were there to trade their freaking cards right do you think 25% of Da are trading cards with each other every day oh I don't know I I don't have any then I'm not going to build it I'm not I'm going to do it on Discord and I'm going to find a higher monetization feature to build into the core game like I haven't built one but just starting to think about the design problems I would just go like H this is a [ __ ] nightmare to make this UI and then to build this back in and deal with the corner cases and like dealing with also you're taking on fraudulent Behavior like like more customer service requests just just Outsource this to Discord and now it's not our problem anymore and build build a progressive offer feure we

have a call heroic labs and have them build the TCH for this and no they build they build generic backend solutions that the the user interface and customer service is the hard part so that's that's the part that's going to bite you in the ass but I okay fine it's I know it's hard but these I see these as growth and engagement well maybe not so much growth but I see these as engagement and retention tools that I imagine more than 25% of The Da are engaging this Behavior just by seeing the amount of people joining these groups I bet against that I bet against that I'm with Ethan on this one bet against that too sorry bease [ __ ] you guys oh I know I know it sounds fun it sounds like a brand stunt it is no I this is not having this nothing to do with brand yeah I'm I am she's a power user I am a power user and I but I also think it app

plays to a specific segment of the audience that is highly motivated by this if I was the producer on the game the amount of data you would have to show me to make this feature worth while like this is this is a real easy no okay okay I mean one of the things I'm seeing in these screenshots Jen is level 6555 in Royal match I mean that is impressive so like I think you should at least be commended for being a true power user I think you can speak with authority there I don't even think I'm as far in Royal match as as many I came very late to Royal match and if only there were more entries in the rebel Moon franchise think of how far into Royal match you would be by now you would be hate watching Rebel Moon 19 the Moon that fell to Earth you do the DC cut a moon for All Seasons DC DC Justice League cut you got your your like level 10,000 cut out for you oh my god did you did you watch the CER cut I

actually did and I did and I don't remember anything about it other than like I second screened it while doing spreadsheet work and I remember it was 4 hours long and it was black and white and um and there was more uh cyborg that's the the key hurt the brand hurt the brand right I think we found one no it didn't hurt the brand what helped the brand was release the SN cut like Justice League was a piece of [ __ ] that Josh Weeden did and so the whole story is z out of this no you can't Weeden did the re shoots he did did the re-shoot in the editing because of didn't Snider's Kid die we got it's an somebody had to step in and finish this billion dollar budget movie because of a real human tragedy real human tragedy and so we got to we got to close this podcast all right well all right okay no one wants to hear the Justice I disagree with that story that narrative I it was it was a bad bad movie from start to finish no one comes out ahead uh okay fine it it was not uh the

best it was not as horrible as people say it was and I'm a huge DC fan so it makes me sad all right so we are going to close it out Ethan so lovely to have you back good luck it was great to be back I'll I'll be back in in nine months Happ to have you whenever whenever two people are out the same week and I'm not crushed with work I I'll be back but this was fun I was worried I I I didn't remember how to comment on the news anymore no you can never forget you're always perfect and it was so awesome to have you see you next week everyone 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 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