TWIG #281 Switch 2, Moon Active 💗 Spyke Games, Helldivers vs. PSN

[Music] hello and welcome to this weekend games twig 281 where we read and dis still all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to here's what we're going to be talking about today players Prevail with hell divers 2 versus Sony PSN Nintendo announces switch 2 is coming before the end of q1 25 Unity gets a new boss Squad Busters gets a [ __ ] ton of prees spike games goes to the moon okay all that and more so I'm your host Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden Inferno and today we have on our illustrious twig panel Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting hey hey Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting what's up I'm back and queen of product deat Dives Laura Toranto senior director of

product at Big Fish Games hello hello good to have everyone here so um Chris thank you for coming back and I I I love that you listen to the podcast when you're out because all kinds of slacks come in um what did you think of Ethan's return Jesus Christ Ethan dude you make this [ __ ] too [ __ ] easy Dude too easy Dude that [ __ ] Stellar blade stuff was cre creepy as [ __ ] what was that right they're talking about nude naked suits on little anime girl characters like people to wonder why anime [ __ ] ain't mainstream right it's because of that dude it is creepy you know of course I had to go look it up on the internet and now I'm flagged by every PE site in the [ __ ] planet right now I'm I'm on the watch list so shut the [ __ ] up Ethan stop talking about your nude anime [ __ ] and and and God damn it stop making it so easy to

make fun of you that's it that's all I got on him good okay good so all of the other great stuff he said didn't matter um it's just that he's AEP this though like this is what's this is what's selling this is what you're a fan of you love to bring this up like goddess of Victory does over half a billion dollars like that's an incredible success we should talk about this we should not avert our eyes this is what's selling I me I don't know what to tell you I'm on every pedophile watch list for looking up like naked pictures of little girls on the internet have you been to Japan yes that's Japan but that's why it's never going to be mainstream I know I know that's why it's never going to be mainstream in the west it's just not it's just not naked suits you kidding me it's growing are you kidding me all right Phil I I didn't expect the vehement defense of the creepy [ __ ] in the internet I mean I just I think we got to do honest research look who else is on the watch list um Anyway by the way I I I wanted to show my visit last week but unfortunately uh I cannot I

wanted to actually talk about this unnamed company I wanted to say what a lovely part of the country it is but I can't I also want to talk about the wonderful people that I met but I can't the company culture but I can't or the strategy which I agree or I disagree about which I can't I also you know wanted to talk about what an amazing event was but I can't so overall I can't say anything which is profoundly disappointing I wrote a relatively innocuous script I thought but it did not get through the uh powers that be at this organization that I cannot mention I'm so glad that you did or did not potentially have a great time somewhere in the world with people good job congrats yeah okay very very interesting well maybe what you can talk about yeah this is not GNA win me any friends but I I have to do this because I feel like I it's my obligation to point out these sorts of things so I have an a16 update evidently my a16 Z

whatever uh got some attention and uh it looks like folks were a little bit unhappy but maybe I'll make them even more unhappy so what people were asking me to update is that clarification around the 600 million that a6z raised for the gaming fund so the money that was raised for the gaming fund was part of the overall fund rais right so it was a percent allocation on a broader raise from the big LPS that invest in A6 Z so it was not the gaming Foles that raised the 600 million but it was the overall fund that raised the 7 billion of which $600 million was allocated to the gaming so in orderers for investors LPS to participate in the growth fund Ai and the American Dam oh dynamism I knew I was going to mess that up part of their dollars were had to be allocated to gaming so does that all make sense so far got it okay yep so that's what they wanted me to clarify wasn't really the gaming Fund

Raising 600 million which is still an absurd number just just so you know another quick clarification evidently the $750,000 check is for preed right for the seed rounds I had said that they would not they they could basically take over that round for seed rounds that's not accurate what's accurate is that for the seed rounds it's open to any other VCS and a16z will invest parata which basically means that they can only invest enough to maintain their ownership which is similar to the way y combinator worked or still does to this day so it's the a round this is where it gets dicey it's the a round in which they can cherry-pick the companies that they like the best that have the best prospects in which they can basically take over the round completely and this is happening for at least one investment they're cherry-picking and that's the big difference between this and Y combinator which limits their investment typically to prata for subsequent rounds which is not quite accurate but I'm not going to go into it any anymore they did

start doing what a16z but they stopped doing that anyway so what bothers me about this is this is not necessarily good for companies like you know it it's great from a funding perspective but the company really should be getting different investors at at a more mature phase right whether it's strategics whether it's other Venture capitals other companies that actually can provide services to help them get to the next stage of growth so this is not really good and then the other clarification which is more of a positive thing which one of the uh venture capitalist told me is that the activities of the speed round the way they're actually doing the speed round actually could generate good returns particularly if they take over the rounds on the a side right so that's really really good but the still the number the dollars don't really work out to be enough to justify a $600 million fund probably like half of that right but what the problem is it creates a lot of zombie companies right so if they do not participate or not as interested in being aggressive on the a rounds then these companies are like almost untouchable right other VCS are not going to look at them so it creates kind of a problem with some of the companies

that they're investing in if they don't choose to be more aggressive on it no it's complicated but it still sounds like what you and Mishka were saying from a high level stands which is there is the potential for cherry picking of certain companies and there's a potential for what you're calling I like it zombie Walking Dead companies zombie companies who if they're just okay because a16z is on their cap table and doesn't decide to keep going other folks might not touch them kind of like when Ethan talks about Stellar blade but also like other VCS if they know that the best companies are going to be taken over by a6z they're not going to spend as much time looking at them you know because they know that they're not goingon to be able to participate because they're going to hog the entire round so if they you know so okay so looking at the big picture um there were a lot of I get Google Alerts way that I can kind of tell what's going on in the news and so there's a lot of data reports this week from companies I've never heard of and this one came up

called Data Horizon Research never heard of them and it caught my eye because they said the global video game Market is projected to reach 720 billion with a kager of 12.6% by 2032 right I've never seen a projection out that far and as we all know because you just can't in video games it's just stupid so our typical friends at newu just to give you like the real down to earth projection is 205 billion by 2026 uh with a ker of 1.3% right this is kind of where we have felt is a little bit more realistic so while I appreciate all these generic research companies going out and trying to show the value of the game industry to folks that may want to invest or just get information like I saw this posted in some of the channels of my clients and I was like whoa everybody slow your rooll because we shouldn't be using these now again it's a 2032 to 2026 projection but chis

like isn't this like a little bit garbage and crazy it's ridiculous a ridiculous analysis uh they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and there I actually read through a little bit of their press release and this might be a good indication of what's going on it says uh I I quote Saudi Arabia and UAE are the Forefront of video game Market due to high demand from the youth population and the high disposable in the region right well maybe maybe someone is uh supporting this analysis uh but evidently it's an Indian group which clearly has no grasp whatsoever on what the video game Space is because these forecasts are laughable at best and so I don't know didn't navic do an analysis where they try to like do another estimation of the market do you remember this yeah dude I was I was going to mention that want to throw navic out the bus it was it was bit craft and it was like one of the first

things that they did outside of crypto and it was so bad do you remember where the growth came from was it just accessories that they included like I guess IP I don't know what else you put in The Bu I think yeah I I don't know I think they just I don't know what they did it was not a well-received piece of uh analysis and they do much better work than that generally speaking but I think I got in trouble with navic because of that report because I actually talked trash about it and I was like P NG grada for like months right but they never cop to it but I talked to them all shocking that you we're good you talk [ __ ] about it yeah so this is my cautionary tale if you happen to see this report uh maybe think twice about using it and just stick with our new friends yeah stick with newu that's my idea that's good advice all right uh moving on valve is now calling Early Access to pre-ordered games Advanced access oh they are they're rebranding Early Access to Advan

why Jen this is straight out of your playbook this is straight out of your playbook what are you talking about this is a beautiful idea like they've been listening to the podcast yeah defend that Jen I think it's brilliant I think it's brilliant like the Early Access label is a label you know that like that that means [ __ ] uh why not why not throw in another label Advanced access now they're Advanced they're the most evil monetization company out there and no one calls them out for it and I I I love it this is great uh I I I got nothing I didn't read it and from a rebranding stpoint um please don't Rebrand to the same [ __ ] word that was total gotcha for Miss Jen all right moving on super sell backed hype pipe to give creators 100% of revenue from user generated content oh Philly you work with them or you know of them no I just like them oh okay I I just like them I'm into them I think they're doing cool stuff this is their like first big step

in terms of monetization and that's where the flywheel for ugc starts and so like let's see the thing uh if it spins okay very cool can you explain what high highpipe is I haven't heard of them it is a ugc platform for mobile and one of the big things is that you can edit inside of the app it's a very seamless experience in terms of like finding new content yeah you can think Tik Tok in terms of like Discovery um and they're they're just very smart people so kind of like ufn but on a mobile platform but not inside of a broader game right like there's multiple game types you can create multiple game types I don't want to speak for them okay all right so moving on to Nintendo news um there's actually a tweet or a message from the president of Nintendo where he came out and said it was really interesting I've never seen them do something like this before like switch two is coming but we're not going to announce when but we will announce when before the end of q125 so I I think they were getting ahead of the idea that Nintendo Direct

which is coming in June is only going to cover titles that are in the second half of 24 and they're not going to talk about switch 2 so hey everybody we're setting your expectations show up to Nintendo Direct but don't really because we don't really have a lot to show you because there's not much left coming for switch one but don't get excited about switch 2 great comms message I think they also had to issue something after the whole leaked report they've been pretty mum on that no no this is this is managing Wall Street and managing the stock pure and simple right gave guidance that was absolute shite right compared to last year because they don't have a switch two coming this year and so they need to like plate the masses on the hedge fund side and the uh and the investor side saying hey we're gonna announce it this year right so basically it's coming next year so hold on yeah right buy the stock you know and so the Stock's only down like 5 percent which on the guidance it should be down a lot

more but now everyone kind of can expect that the next switch will be out in next year and that'll help kind of rebound them and and I'm I'm relatively bullish on the prospects of the switch too so we'll see yeah that makes sense I think I read that and this is obvious their Hardware projection is down 20% this year their guidance I mean it's kind of like the announce before the announ the announce of the announce with GTA 6 I I think exactly same I think everyone's looking at what GTA did and we like O Let's announce the announce this is awesome great idea okay Laura what do you got all right I have to say I do prefer covering investments in m&a and then layoffs Employments and enclosures so very glad you're you're back Eric uh I think he's gonna fight you for that he's gonna switch that up fight Mishka who normally takes this so our friend of deconstructor fun Reena CEO of spike games they secured 50 million from

moonactive who now owns about just under 16% of Spike game shares spike is best known for tile Busters which was the tile match game with they took all the everything that kind of works in match three applied it to the tile match gameplay I think with this investment from moonactive I fully expect to see a minor revamp of tile blast tile Busters and then hopefully a revenue hockey stick but we'll cover this a little bit more we're going to dig into moonactive later and then from friend of the podcast Neil long at mobile gamer. Biz supercell and Benchmark have taken part in a funding round for web 3 game startup games for a living the studio was founded by uh veterans from Activision Blizzard EA king um and they raised 3.2 million bringing total funds raised to 7.6 and they recently soft launched a hero battler called called Elemental Raiders I haven't played it

I'm reserving judgment all right layoffs Employments closures I don't know why this is in here but Tik Tock is uh suing of course to uh block the US app ban which is unsurprising to anyone this is going to affect the games right like don't you think this will have an impact like this is a big Channel we've been talking about this don't you think this we should adjust forecasts if now that this is happening shouldn't we adjust forecasts no you don't think it's G impactful it's going to impact the UA environment for sure temporarily yeah I hope for cool your heads prevail we'll see yeah I mean all right we could talk about this some other time maybe with someone that has more expertise here but it's a and plus it's a year out and the court battle is going to delay everything and so if anything the minimum that something would even potentially happen is a year from now yeah I don't know I don't know about this I I have my thoughts about it's all it's so political that again it's not it's not really business

related but if Tik Tok is gone from the ecosystem it will impact UA environment but I think the u.a environment is improving enough across other channels that it may have less of an impact than you might think but um I'll ask around and see if if that's true or not um okay this one's a big weird thing to me and and I actually really want to be corrected on this because I don't know Bromberg personally I think I've talked to him once but Unity appoints ex singga exec m Bromberg as CEO Bromberg has like two decades of experience in the industry he was a CEO at Zinga from 16 to 22 he also was leadership roles including GM for BioWare and Senior vice president of strategy operations for EA Mobile by the way those two areas of EA were not thriving at that time just to be clear um so I'm very confused about this appointment and I'm not really sure Unity needs Bromberg right now and Maybe I'm Wrong by all reports though Bromberg

is a worldclass operator but he's also by all feedback he's a world-class um but um don't you think I I think Unity needs a benevolent dictator now like someone like to charm customers and motivate troops and attract talents you know haven't they done the cuts you know do they really need another ruthless dictator um to manage them going forward I think they need kind of a Visionary to get them kind of back on track and keep them moving you know again this kind of makes sense if they were about ready to sell unity and so they have some guy that's gonna you know get people in gear and get them ready for sale but they already had that guy right that that was the the interim guy did that [ __ ] he did all that work so I kind of think they need kind of a big leader like a big personality to take them to the promis land you know to lead them into a

different path I'm not sure bronberg is that kind of leader and and maybe maybe I'll hire the right people beneath him ironically you know who the person that makes the most sense is his partner in crime um that's at match right now Bernard Kim Bernard Kim like Bernard Kim on here makes more sense like to to [ __ ] you know go after these customers that are all [ __ ] pissed off and like sweet talk them you know well that reminds me of uh sorry I'm going to talk about the social media Network that shall not be named so with Twitter Linda Yaro was this leader of the ad business ad sales at NBC I think it was NBC Universal and then Elon hired her as the CEO of Twitter to come in and charm back all of the ad people who had left right so so I was like okay well I can kind of see that I thought they might have picked someone from like the ad world because their ad business with iron source is where the revenues coming from it's not like the engine business

is really where it's at I know yeah I'm kind of scratching my head here I mean and maybe at the end of the day there's not a lot of operators out there there not a lot of CEO people to choose from but Bromberg you know I don't know all right I don't get the Good Vibes unless they're GNA sell themselves to like Microsoft or something which is possible right or Amazon or I don't know yeah clean it I think we lost in didn't we we had a vote on who we thought would get the CEO and I think all of us lost that one no one picked this guy who did we pick I don't even remember oh we were like joking with Frank Frank Jabo or uh yeah Frank actually makes a little bit more sense to me think you had even said um the app loving guy Adam no because we were joke because of the ad business right we were joking that someone would come in exactly this from the ad business okay anyway all right anyway all right moving on this podcast is brought to you by

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this podcast is brought to you by sensor Tower sensor tower has acquired mobile analytics company data AI formerly known as we all know and love app Annie four things you should know significant advancement number one this acquisition represents a major step forward for sensor Tower it expands its customer base mobile marketing and app intelligence products and Global presence number two Undisputed Le leadership position sensor Tower strengthened its position as the leader in digital marketing and mobile app intelligence through this acquisition number three combined insights this merger with data AI allows sensor Tower to offer customers even stronger and more detailed insights on the Digital customer journey and last consumer Trends with increasing time spent on digital channels the combined company is well positioned to capitalize on the growing trend of inapp purchases driven by platforms like Google meta Tik Tok

YouTube Instagram and snap exciting times lie ahead for sensor Tower and data AI as a join forces if you're a customer reach out to your account director for more information not a customer yet no problem schedule a call to explore the Innovative digital marketing products they offer go to data AI or sensor to.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the business [Music] okay uh Bela games lays off 20% of the workforce as it becomes more critical of future titles I don't know what that means I don't know Bela very that well take two uh shutdown roll seven and intercept games um and the private division is suffering layoffs I honestly in today's market this makes total much sense to me it doesn't really make sense for take two or these big Publishers to be investing in small games I think it's good PR but it's not good business business where the market's at right now

I know people don't like that but I just think that is true and actually along the same lines so so it's ironic now I'm talking out of two sides of my mouth here but like for take two it does not make sense to make small games on the flip side like the whole microsof sorry now it's a big rant so Microsoft is closing redfall developer Arcane Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango game works and roundhouse game is like consolidating so basically in essence they [ __ ] annihilating the entire acquisition of Bethesda besides the corot group that does like Fallout Starfield Etc and ID right it looks like ID is still whole to some degree it's like dude [ __ ] you Microsoft right [ __ ] Phil Spencer dude he promised that they're building out teams to build out the subscription service like the whole point of biing these teams is so they could build creative content for the subscription so what the [ __ ] is going on right and so even the guys at Kaku right were like

what the [ __ ] is going on and they wrote this article basically saying it's time to stop giving Xbox Phil Spencer a pass it has been long [ __ ] time dude like Phil Spencer is driving this thing into the ground right it's like under his so it says under his leadership many many have lost jobs and fewer games have made and out the door it's time to acknowledge that Xbox boss Bill Spencer is making bad decisions you think you think I mean come on what is happening right their whole strategy was to build out Studios to build out a service to build online capabilities to build a subscription service like that was their whole [ __ ] strategy right now they're shutting down all these Studios that are making really high quality games that people love you know like absolutely people love Hi-Fi rush like that was an absolute darling of the industry and it's like a a relatively successful game and they're shutting down the studio

they're not even like cutting they're shutting it down completely dude like this is just another example of the model is not working like this subscription model is [ __ ] right and Microsoft is failing and it's like when is anybody going to take to account for this stuff anyway I I can't take it anymore it's driving me insane all right this is a lot of closure I I guess why would you not try to sell the Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango game works because because that game was a darling it was really Innovative and different why wouldn't you like put them up for sale I guess if you're Microsoft you don't care you're like uh I mean they they've already laid off what was it 1900 people a couple months ago when after the Activision uh merger went through I don't know if these were included in that number or not actually I don't know if these are incremental layoffs so to speak to that but Crest any idea like why wouldn't you try to like sell it get money for it trying to acquire a Japanese company can can get

messy yeah okay that could have been it okay I mean look at the end of the day this is exactly what I was saying months and months and years ago is that the subscription bottle does not [ __ ] work like the revenue that you get from subscription minus the cost of making all these games is not profitable right that that the unit economics don't [ __ ] work in gaming for subscription type services and so this is a simple calculation it's like we're spending all this money on game development which teams can we cut to make that dollar number lower so that we become more profitable I mean it's if it's that simple right and so like everything else is just is [ __ ] PR right like that that's what's happening like the subscription model is not working they just spent a gajillion dollars and not only spending the forget the 70 billion they spent for Call of Duty that's irrelevant honestly from a from a p&l perspective but what what's relevant is now all the costs associated with King and blizzard and and Call of Duty are

coming in their p&l and they have to justify all those costs and now it's even less far less profitable than it was before they acquired them you know what I mean it's like so so that's what it is really it's dollars and cents it's and and cutting makes far more sense than the effort to like try to sell something maybe but it's just a shame you know it's like what do you think is going to happen type thing this is if it's not not nearly as bad as embracer but it's getting there you know um so got it I I'm I'm hoping that Phil Spencer will take you know I mean he's got to take blame for all this [ __ ] he's been [ __ ] managing this [ __ ] for 10 years you know this is all on his watch you know all right all right let moving on to some games that aren't shut down Squad Busters has announced that it has 20 million pre-registrations and 30 million in its sites with 27 days to go Jen I don't know how to think about pre-registrations right now like cod Wars Zone got a bunch but it looks like it didn't translate to that much does

this does this mean anything so preist typically convert better than they did for war zone because we talked about this a little bit we were like why didn't war zone convert so what I noticed was that the download for war zone was 4 gig and then another three gigs when you actually open up the app and so if you imagine prees happening in countries where you're just not on Wi-Fi you have to actually pay for your downloads um that might be a problem so maybe in a lot of countries the conversion just slacked off there then there was a ton of reports of performance issues crashes inconsistent frame rates graphical glitches and then you know maybe a lot of the devices weren't compatible so one of the things I learned when we were launching TFT is we have a a really Vibrant Community in Brazil but in Brazil still a lot of the phones are a lot older and couldn't actually run our

game and I imagine with this type of performance right cuz Activision came out and said we want this to be really high performing game that a lot of the devices that pre-ged the game actually couldn't run it this is my guess of what led to that and Squad Busters most likely I didn't look at the download size for this or the performance specs but supercell makes games that works on mobile phones like they know how to do this where you know the four Studios trying to pull war zone together probably that make games for console typically might not have you know factored that in so any anyway does that how does that sound as as a reason why conversion sucked on that game yeah that makes sense to me I mean I'd love to check the da numbers to see whether or not they're like suffering in those countries but yeah sure I buy that and then battery life too I also saw all these reports of it I didn't realize that you can actually hurt your battery if you play a game for a really long time it kills the you know the battery

WID so and War Zone was like a hot pancake when you play that yeah the phone got really was really warm I think it could like heat my lunch Squad Busters especially because supercell knows how to do the uh the marketing for this I think they're going to hit 30 million they might even surpass it and I I would estimate the conversion being pretty solid I think they probably get between 60 to 70% conver verion on the down this is my projection you know I'm going to be CR but has anybody looked at the metrics on this game it's not monetizing at all I I didn't say anything about making money I don't think you can say anything about supercell soft launch games now because so many people are like vpnn into the soft launch countries they're such a big brand following it's hard to know what's noise and what's what's real here so I think like all those metrics just seem fake to me I don't think they're predictive of anything yet really like they they could also be very generous with the economy during this period maybe maybe they tighten it up a little bit right I really want to see how this

monetization engine runs like it's going to be very it's coming out it's coming out in a few weeks man yeah it's it's never been a more pay to win concept i' I've never seen it as pay to win as this and it's if this works that's goodis that's good pay to win is back on the menu dude pay to win's always on the menu yeah you're talking about it's like that's mobile right May 29 is the projected launch date so we'll see Hades 2 has launched it is in Early Access and is already climbing up the steam charts we'll have more to say about it next week but this is of course based on the original Rog like which sold I think Millions upon millions of copies so they've come out with a sequel let's see how it performs speaking of seeing how things perform X to fiant is finally going to be live on May 21st I I have been waiting for this day Ubisoft is really taking its time to to get this out the door but it's it's happening

they're shipping a game is it D it's not on Steam it's not on Epic it's only on uh for PC anyway I think it's only on ubisoft's client you play oh really why why would you do that why would you limit distribution in that way that's insane I don't know maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm WR I searched for it I couldn't find it and I'm like this is dear [ __ ] Ubisoft connect dude I don't want that [ __ ] on my PC yeah that that stuff's awful um Microsoft sales down 30% year-over-year this is Xbox Hardware Sales like when I look when I look at the reason for Microsoft's decline like yeah you need you need to ship more units uh 10 cents dungeon and fighter mobile game will launch May 21st this is this is based on like one of the all-time best performing games ever in the world and it took them what like seven years to get this thing out in Mobile that's crazy just absolutely crazy and it's going to it's going to destroy in China of course so if we close out April with some analytic updates brawl stars is still tearing it up it is the second most number of

downloads in the United States over the last two weeks according to sensor Tower it's performing at nearly $30 million worldwide and we don't know what web stores are so this is just looking at net revenues on censer Tower they could be performing even more Revenue when we include web stores they've already made more in 2024 than all of in 2023 holy [ __ ] like congrats to them they're absolutely killing it right now I don't know what the ceiling is this year but it looks like incredible performance so far Monopoly go just an update there it's flatlined at about $22 million a week which puts it at around a 1.1 billion doll run rate that is like in the pantheon of all-time great mobile franchises like I think it's we could almost put it there now like Candy Crush Pokemon go Clash of Clans like Monopoly go is like cementing its place and I also started to look at coin Master which is also compared to and it's been relatively stable over this period it's just that go go has monetized so much better than than coin master has but

they've started to align in terms of active users uh Monopoly go has flatlined quite a bit which I've been surprised by oh before you move off of Monopoly go quick uh future shill so I'm going to be speaking with Ben webbley the CMO of scopely on Friday in a couple days if you have any questions you would like me to get in uh you guys let me know U we're approaching everything from a marketing angle you know how to scale your soft launch to Launch um how to build out your marketing operations to support all that so you guys on this podcast let me know if you have questions quick FYI so I was looking at the q1 numbers and it looks like sensor tower has the market up like 15% year-over-year mobile it's like the largest market for the US ever even in 2021 right but ADI has the market up five part of it because they don't know what Monopoly goes is doing in theory and so they're basically extrapolating

and then that kind of filters down with their system so there's a lot of interesting numbers that are floating out there so it looks like things are go go go but without Monopoly go the market would be up like 5% in the US according to Center Tower but like yeah I don't know I'm actually a little bit confused so anybody that has like clarp you know like our D people or sensor Tower I'm sure they're so busy with integration that they're not going to listen to me but things are a little off it's difficult for them everything that I've always heard when I've talked to them is anything at the very top is very difficult for them to extrapolate unless they get direct information which I don't think they do from almost anybody anymore if you're down lower like you know in slot 11 down then it's it's so much easier so sorry and so and and they're also trying to uh match the data that's being reported by scopely themselves right so they they have to incorporate that and so that makes even higher I don't know so it hasn't really cannibalized anything

though that that's what I find that seems to be incredible it seems to be all additive right this is just growing industry GDP that is crazy that is unbelievable the fact that coin Master is still going as strong as it always has is a good call out right that's pretty amazing because it is identical we don't know a lot about these players though like who who are the players that Monopoly go added that were not playing mobile games before not spending like we don't we don't know anything about those players and if this is like the largest source of growth in this industry like we we should understand more about that yeah I mean solsten Friends of the Pod um I asked them to help me understand this question and um a little bit about probably what I can say about them is they are casually oriented players and they behave a little bit like merge players actually um they have a lot of the same you know Outlook as the old school Pogo players Cris if you remember Pogo which is you know older people who want to do coopertition which is the

idea of like hey I want to work with other people and play a game together and feel like you know I have a little bit of an online community there's a lot of kind of partner or positive play going on where you're teaming up with people in fact and I think that report we talked about last week the liftoff report they talked a lot about some of the miname events that you're seeing in these games starting to really go after the idea of how do you team up with other people against a common goal you even see this in Royal match with the dragon egg thing which is some weird event that you do where you have to work with another person to achieve goals so but I think it's a great question Phil is is this the first time we've really seen something be incremental we know ginin and and hanai honai cannibalized ginin in the same space but in casual is there the opportunity to create new games that actually grow the business incrementally puzzle's been growing so yes and to go back to Affinity between games 100% there's a big Affinity

between excluding um the types of games for hyper casual merge players like Match 3 games not all of them simulation games anything like the Heyday those players also like merge games merge is super versatile in terms of capturing audience share it's exactly why we'll talk about this with moon active it makes sense for Moon active to start going into the Casual space because you can move those players around and we see it with games like when we talked about white out survival they're starting to capture audiences that were not necessarily defined as 4X but the way they've done onboarding and the way they've brought in they've casualized it makes it a lot more appealing for growing and bringing in players that normally wouldn't play wouldn't pay that are doing both of those things and I think Monopoly Go is is doing that in the sense of that game is so easy to pick up and play Jen you've talked about this um what was I can't remember what you called it I called the onboard ramp well signposting the ability to direct

you around the game very yeah using that very clear and crisp UI that helps you understand how to navigate around inside the app it's something that's actually not very easy to do you have to have really good UI folks that really think through the player experience to help you go through very clearly uh we did it poorly let go clean we were actually I mean we had a whole project that's why I know it's signpost and this is what we called it because we were trying to fix that because the games were a lot older at the time when when I was running them you know we' already had like our third birthday which in Mobile at the time in 2018 was like that was a big deal for game to be live that long but but yes yes no absolutely correct well you did a lot of this stuff right like you've worked with a lot of folks on trying to really well this is your whole hybrid casual rant right like this is how do we take some of these easy mechanics add some depth to it yes ask me ask about drill and collect it's amazing I'm having so much fun with it everyone

should play drill and collect this is my spare hobby it's incredible game uh I want to talk about it a separate period that would be my shout out all right so um another place to find games that you wouldn't maybe expect to find games to get an audience Laura you want to talk about playing some g i I tried this go ahead super okay I'll keep it super quick so I assume all of this checked LinkedIn probably daily Maybe the average person couple times a week if you haven't FYI they've announced three new games so LinkedIn I think is testing becoming a some sort of gaming platform and if you do well in these games and I'll describe them in a moment you can share them with your entire Professional Network so the three games are pinpoint which is very similar to New York Times connections cross climb which is just a word Ladder game uh and queens which is a I would call this a simplified version of suduku they are seeing an opportunity

for what New York Times has already identified and they are going hard after that trying to convince wers there's more than there's more to life than just a daily whle I'm so excited to play games with you guys on LinkedIn let's do it I wish they had profile Cosmetics though that'd be kind of fun oh I'm sure all of that's coming chis you don't want to make fun of this one this this is so like up your alley to make fun of nah I'm moving on you know whatever okay soup dour more games is good how about that more games is good okay this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps lier the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar Works Smarter with apps fer that's your

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a big cruffle this past weekend with hell divers 2 so let me give you the recap of everything that went on it was kind of like not nearly as bad as the unity runtime fee when you know we were like o what's going to happen now but here's what happened so what the hell happened with hell divers 2 PlayStation has reverse course on the Mandate that they were going to have players have to create PSN accounts they were requiring players who even downloaded on Steam to set up a PSN account so they're walking this back after um the unpopular policy was going to go into place so players put up 200,000 negative reviews on poor hell divers 2's steam page to you know really help people know that they were not happy with this hell divers 2 has sold 8 million units as of March 2024 and has actually been a really great example of innovative liveops I I don't think they get enough

credit for how they've been approaching that all of that Goodwill has now like just taken an absolute hit uh I can't remember a comm's nightmare like this since actually the unity debacle so uh one of the things that was interesting and I can actually appreciate this the developers called Arrowhead and their CEO did actually take a little bit of responsibility while still pointing a lot of fingers at Sony he said quote I do have a part to play I'm Not blameless in all of this it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk enough about that we knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online Playstation titles he then stepped in it a bit when um players ask why did you sell it in 177 countries if you knew you needed PSN account and it was going to be in a sense delisted so

what happened was because you can't actually connect in 177 countries so it just got delisted and so people that downloaded it now could no longer play it so because they've re you know unfurled this policy that's not the case anymore but that was the case that they walked into so huge kind of nightmare going on for everyone involved I wanted to ask because I feel like that I didn't quite understand where the outrage came from except for the understand okay you you buy this game you start playing it you love it and then you're forced to sign in with PSN which is only available in the H there's 177 non PSN countries so that part I get but this also isn't the only game that seems to have a PC requirement for PSN sign in because they had the ghost of suima also requires a network account for well for its multiplayer mode but not campaign I'm the uninformed one maybe I represent a little bit of the some of the other people who don't

understand as listeners where's the rage coming from so first of all remember they said on the steam page that this would be coming so they they told people ahead of time but you still could have bought it in a country that eventually would not have been usable because it would not be supported by the PSN account so it's almost like your purchase now becomes defunct which was obviously a mistake even if they told you that like they are the least cost avoider like they they need to inform they need to not not list the at all cuz obviously they don't want that but this is fine like steam offered refunds what's the outrage you know and you look at you look at these countries we can look at Steam Reviews by language and you look at the countries that are not supported by PSN accounts it's not very many countries so this is about that the players that probably loved the game and now can no longer play so that is the Crux of the issue no no no no no no no see that's what that's the misinformation right it's it's a vocal minority of people that don't want to do this PSN [ __ ] that are screaming bloody murder and it doesn't really impact them at all right and the people

that actually does impact are not the ones that are talking about this I can't imagine there's not enough people yeah it's like it's like they're just bitching about something right so the way I interpret this whole thing is that like originally it was a requirement for PSN to do it they shut it off because they they wanted to make sure that the launch was as smooth as possible and there's less friction as possible which was not a bad move right and then they tried to redo it because they were contractually required by S to do so right and then they just got [ __ ] screwed what was crazy is I I read that the community manager yeah of the company was the one that was telling people to bomb them on reviews on Steam because he didn't like the idea of actually creating PSN accounts and he got subsequently fired right so I don't know whenever these like core Gamers get all [ __ ] hot and bothered about this [ __ ] and just create a big Kur fuffle I am a little bit less like you know like this is a business right they want PSN accounts they want people actively involved in the PSN ecosystem

right if they're publishing it on [ __ ] steam they want people to sign in with PSN right I don't I think that's a god-given right right for you know so I don't know dude the problem is you know from this from a comm's perspective was you need to set players expectations up front so here's like a little bit of how I I think about this from a comm's perspective I know Phil this is not necessarily like the Crux of the issue but here's how I would have communicated the need to do this cuz you know Crush you're right like ultimately to get more people into the game the arrowhead decided not to make people log in but if you know that it's coming you still need to account for that so number one is set players expectations early which is exactly what he admitted they didn't do um you have to build trust with your community you have to say it you have to follow through with it you have to let people know exactly what's coming you have to overc communicate if there's an issue you have to be honest about it and speak in player speak not in corporate

PR speak which they didn't even really necessarily get into this here because it just kind of came up on them like all of the sudden so the the reason why this was so quick is the policy was going to go into effect four days after they said that it was going to happen so I think it was something like May 6th the policy was supposed to go into effect all those people were going to have to log in and they gave people four days notice like that's just absolutely horrific to do that to your player base so the other thing is as this was ongoing they were not necessarily communicating really well you know make sure that you tell people hey I'll have an update for you by X time and then at X time come out and say here's the update that is how you kind of do proper crisis coms and they didn't really even do that at this time and you know where you can just be a little bit more open and honest that's why I was like uh I was really really happy with how the arrowhead CEO kind of talked about it because he's like I'm

kind of not you know I'm Not Innocent in all of this now where they could have avoided a lot of this too was to offer very generous compensation this is um our speak for give players a lot of stuff to tell people you're sorry in fact they probably should have just done that from the the beginning they should have just said listen we're going to require you to log in with PSN the benefit of logging in is you get to save your game you get crossplatform you get whatever the other benefits are I don't even know what they are and to do that we're going to give you this free [ __ ] in the game I have teams that always ask this question when they have to make an economic change in the game do I rip off the Band-Aid and just say it very quickly and just just implement it or do I announce it just like you suggested why do you think it was the right idea for them to instead move the date out rather than doing it in 4 days because you can also build they can build hype the these redditors they organize they have an agenda you know uh and and like once

they they form an agenda and they they target something like they can they can create just like you know just the vibe in the air why would that be a better strategy here how much time should they give like it's two weeks the best time because they just did it and like look at this crisis happened and now it's over with and no one is going to give a [ __ ] about this in like a week right this had no impact on player numbers now of course it wasn't implemented so there wouldn't be any technical things but like all this whining whining whining whining it doesn't just it doesn't seem to move numbers that's but they pulled the requirement right they did pull the requirement it's true so that the VOC already won won true yep they did win which is it's nice for players but it is extremely dangerous for companies moving forward because now players know that they can if they organize which is what you know the internet allow I mean this is Wall Street bats what Wall Street bats did with the GameStop stock so now that they know that they can win everyone's kind of screwed and so the the idea is you're just going to have to get in front of it if you're a game developer and make sure that if you've

got any really negative change that you need to do the reason why I want to go earlier is you can engage them in conversation and you can engage them and get their feedback and say well this we you know we're going to need to do this here's how we're approaching it we really want to work with you to get your feedback on these types of things it's kind of like hostage negotiation in a way um great book never split the difference by CH Voss will teach you all about hostage negotiation this is what it felt like to me and they just caved right away all right Laura you want to talk about moonactive yes I do okay so I mentioned earlier moonactive invest 50 million in spike games um I already talked about who who Spike are I made tile Busters they actually made a couple other games um and they also are making new games but what I wanted to focus on was they're moving loudly but not not really loudly what does this investment mean towards what they want to do in the

future so I went back just to have a quick look at their portfolio because I think it shows a lot of one how clever they are and two the direction they're moving so they have family Island which is a farming Sim game with Expeditions developed by melsoft in 2019 and we've seen the Expedition mechanic uh used in games like via's Farm by Ace games and then later in the version two of town ship with the 2020 plus version of Township they obviously have coin Master which we've talked about today they have Zen match which was another tile game originally developed by good job games then they have Travel Town which we've covered because of how how they've turned that game from you know earning a little bit of a revenue to becoming the top merge game earner in that sub genre that that merge sub genre um and that game was originally developed by magmatic games now they've invested in Spike for tile Busters which was also a tile Match Game like Zen match but they

go a little bit harder on the social envelope uh that we've seen that was kind of started you could say by like Toyon blast but then has has since evolved into very events heavy very focused on competition and they also have Blitz Busters Spike has those two games now tile Busters Blitz Busters and I actually played about 50 levels of Blitz Busters last night just to get an idea of it it's a match 3D which is kind of the you're picking up through a pile kind of like a match Factory with obstacles they kind of take the same idea of like what works in puzzle games obstacles and then when I was playing it I was like wow this looks really familiar it is the same envelope so the same meta envelope they use in tile Busters they use in in Blitz Busters so it looks like they just changed the core which was very smart it's what king is doing now testing all their new games they have a SK SK meta structure of which then they're just they're trying different basically core engine

mechanics so we see it with um the candy Crut Crush match 3D game their blast game so quick to Market quick to test and now you have two games at probably the cost of like what you building one and a half and they also know I also have a little bit of inside information they're also working on an upcoming match three game in house and I know because they're working with a friend of mine that's one of the best level designers I've ever worked with if you look at that portfolio aside from uh coin Master everything else is casual and it's mostly casual puzzle so they are definitely pivoting away from Social Casino into casual and I was just to taking a little bit of look at sensor Tower and overall Revenue by you know just super high level by those different genres and casual and puzzle games out earn casino on both platforms the only exception in the moon active Cate the portfolio is the simulation game family

Island which underperforms to casino only on Android so I'm not surprised and they and so far when I had a look and and granted coin Master is still the the main earner in all the games they have they made over five billion in lifetime Revenue across their titles and it's not even looking at the admon I mean Travel Town has some and I think some of the best implemented admon I've seen and coinmaster cool 2 million a day Travel Town went from very very small and now they're earning 500,000 a day I mean I am really impressed Moon active investing in this guys make a [ __ ] ton more sense than uh Griffin right so by the Numbers though it looks like they're buying it basically the same valuation as Griffin did two years ago which is really interesting the game is down the game is not showing growth it looks like they're maintaining the audience but they're not spending it's like they don't have enough money to like build I don't know what's going on I I don't want to speculate yeah it is down this is like a flat round is not like doesn't mean things are going 100% well it's

just things that like I think Moon active is a lot better more of a strategic investor like you know to help them with publishing to help them with you know building out liveops to help them do more with the game potentially or even fund their next game potentially I don't know but again this makes a lot more sense than Griffin um this is $55 million SE like the the n road is acquisition right like that why else would they make an investment like this right right they can invest in user requisition they can invest for potential adding it to their portfolio products and Moon actives are gangsters dude those guys really know what they're doing and and I really kind of respect what they do so I think you know that it's a good place for them to be and I'm sure they've been trying to get more active in terms of acquisition and this could be a good setup for them potentially yeah the spike games team is fantastic a lot of the xpak from toun blast that was acquired by Zinga so I I looked a little bit too at moonactive at a level and so Revenue by country us is 2third of their total revenue so it is

even though they aren't necessarily based in the US the US is a majority of their revenue or us UK I think when you added those two together I'm not sh sure how this is happening but they're making a million dollars a month in India on coin Master you know Crest especially we we we give people a lot of [ __ ] for not being able to monetize India but I was like wow that's not that doesn't suck uh coin Master is still for Moon active 72% of their total revenue travel town is now uh up to 16% and that family Island game is 133% uh Zen match which is their other Zen game which isn't tile Busters but Zen match is only $1.2 million a month now so not even that big of a deal so expanding into other casual genres I think makes sense expanding into the team I think crest I think you're right about helping to on the publishing side for spike games I think one of the

hardest things to do when you're a small company having a lot of success is how do you get the capital to continue the UA furnace of you have to keep pumping coal into that UA furnace and it feels like that's what moonactive can come in and and do for them and then have access to this amazing Team all right that just sounds like a publisher don't they just need a publisher that's exactly what a publisher that's literally you just described the publisher well isn't I know but maybe Moon active is I mean I mean that's kind of what they're doing right let's keep it simple stupid Let's Kiss keep it simple D stupid yeah anyway all right well maybe that's Moon active's new uh new mandate is is publishing all right it's good to be back please stop giving Phil Spencer a pass like this is bad bad bad bad news I'm tired of listening I can't believe I'm in agreement with kak on this [ __ ] right it's like Kotaku is writing articles scathing against Phil

Spencer and I'm agreeing with Kotaku life is over so where does it end though this is what I keep asking though like I get it's bad but like when does this end for Microsoft like when do they shut up what they shut down but they just bought activ and they have egg on their face I know I know I know and what I think is GNA happen is ultimately they're going to divest out of this business like that's what's going to happen that is crazy but but it's going to take a while right I mean I me yeah but this going to take a while like you know but's the middle there's no reason for them to be in this bu they can like split into three maybe they like some them can join like middle what is oh that was my favorite one dude that that stock is up a lot oh my God I read this well I S we're not talking about embracer I said I said we wouldn't talk about embracer I said that [ __ ] okay moving on there stock is up is there something interesting wait I want to hear no it's like it's speculative nonsense right like there's no value in any of their businesses really except for asmo maybe and even that's like

Laden with debt so it's like it's going to be a nightmare it's going to be of Epic nightmare anyway all right no more taking times's off I'm I'm back uh for a while so yeah we'll see you next week all right 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 of 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 industri 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 [Music]