TWIG #284 Squad Busters launch talk / Stumble Guys vs. Fall Guys

[Music] hello and welcome to this weekend games 284 where we read and distill all of the weekly game industry news so you don't have to all right today Squad Busters is out got the push note on my phone this morning the Auto download so we have more thoughts and then we'll continue to have more thoughts because that's what we do ex defiant hits a million uniques uh that brings so much joy there's upate there's more than that well well you didn't update me that was what was in here okay more than a million updates or more than a million uniques uh who does fall guys better than fall guys I think we're going to go through all of the what is that a party mode I don't even know what to call those part party mode games Sonic guys Laura wants to chime in and get ready for summer games Fest

that's coming next week on June 7th so hi I am Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jaden INF Inferno today we have on our illustrious panel Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting hey hey Eric Cress principal at gossamer Consulting Group and fan of basketball what up punks and in for Mishka today is Laura Toranto senior director of product at Big Fish Games queen of product deep Dives oh crap we need to do another one we haven't done one in a while I waiting on you oh I am now fully engaged with uh Gossip Harbor I think I'm at level 32 and I spent maybe $25 at least that's it you a it's getting it's it's going up it's going up you're like minnow nuts you're whale nuts no I I'm I feel like I'm entering dolphin territory I'm going to start getting those mid-level offers very soon oh my I'm at the space whale level you

know the in Star Wars when you got the space whales like that's how much money I have spent on that game I actually had to hit pause because I'm a little bit busy right now and I told my wife I was like I am procrastinating playing gossip Harbor in travel town and so I I actually had to put them in a folder on my phone away so that I could focus on work that's how busy I am that I can't play my favorite games R match I haven't dropped that one anyway Chris that's my silly banter what fill it with basketball I have a quick basketball update I haven't talked about it in ages but Jacob did get into the high school that he really wanted to in towards of playing basketball and he will play for the first time practice on Friday and games this weekend he's the only freshman that was invited this week so excited for him a little bit Bittersweet in some sense because it is time to let the [ __ ] go right he's got to do his own [ __ ] now right you know parents are not

welcome in practices anymore I have to sit in the sidelines literally and figuratively I can still scream at the refs of course that's always low um but uh yeah time for him to go he's like 62 185 um and uh yeah he's going to do his own thing he did the whole High School thing this weekend he was gone literally for 48 hours you know we just didn't see him yeah anyway it's happening so that's a quick update yeah the little chicken's fleeing the Nest just like what's the guy's name who does the chicken in the squad Busters oh kenong ken Jang he just like the little chicken L well Eric if you know if you need a new hobby you can come play gossip Harbor with us oh my Lord shoot me yell at the refs you can be a redditor yell at the developers all right Laura you have anything going on okay so the only thing I have been playing I'm a big paper Mar

fan and I have to ad am I'm sorry in advance anytime I bring up Nintendo he always writes to me stop sounding like such a Nintendo fan girl but I did start playing Paper Mario Thousand-Year Door which is a remake from the 2004 GameCube game loving it so far still early same thing super busy I'm like picking it up here and there playing gossip Harbor then Paper Mario really really enjoying it I was hoping to pull some unit sale numbers but I didn't get a chance chance to before this recording so I'll send it to y'all one of the the future ones so you can hopefully talk about how great it's doing I think it deserves it by the way it's [ __ ] Mario it's not Mario it's Mario she's Italian she's Italian I think you can excuse Italian I'm not giving her I'm not giving her a pass on this one it's the Jersey pronunciation I see oh those are fighting words I'm from New York City okay I mean you can take the New York one yes we did a squad Busters

podcast I wrote a piece on it I've been sitting on it for way too long this game has been in my head for way too long hopefully I can get rid of it probably not by next week we'll probably be covering it for a couple weeks but uh I spent a lot of time with the game and the podcast was a lot of fun it was with Mishka and Matthew uh Matthew who you guys know is from turbine Consulting he's a really smart guy in of himself we shoot the [ __ ] A lot it was an absolute blast check out the piece if you get a moment if not just play the game and let us know your thoughts let's get the conversation on this one going this one's interesting I started to listen and then I realized that I would rather watch so I paused halfway through because it is very difficult to talk about all of the stuff going on in the screen and then that's what you said you're like it's actually very difficult to play because there's so much stuff going on on the screen but I thought you guys had a lot of really great insights so well done on to Corrections mine again is a little bit of a clarification so Cris and and others really [ __ ] on the idea of there's no gaming in Wisconsin in the midwest this came up because I was talking to Midwest games

who's an indie publisher in Wisconsin and so he provided me a list of the companies that are in Madison which is really impressive so I'm going to read them very quickly from a live service standpoint Raven who does Call of Duty respawn who does Apex pubg Corp zenmax who is part of Bethesda that does Elder gos online perer blue who does Disney heroes and then he gave me a bunch of others Lost Boys interactive epic has a small office big mode who publish animal well which is that Indie hit hold on a minute the these are these support Studios these are support Studios yes these are Dev teams well that's how you move up the production chain though to be fair that's how you move into higher and higher tier Goods this is how you start you start with Outsourcing and then you start to make your own stuff capital and Talent start to flow I will give credit on this one this deserves a correction we laughed and we shouldn't have this is like the bush leagues dude Bush leagues in Wisconson you got to start somewhere you got to start somewhere this is how you do this is like the G League dude this is the G League anyway all right how many

employees do you think this is oh I don't know I don't know thousand that's the important metric how maybe thousand what's that count yeah okay that's nothing never mind I know that's that's the Ubisoft bench right there yeah exactly if seven guys in a forest and Finland can make stumble guys then why don't we give little Madison Wiis and I'm from Texas by the way so I have no affiliation with the cheese heads that live in Wisconsin let me explain cheese heads for our European audience they make a lot of cheese in Wisconsin and then the American football team they wear cheese on their head the fans I don't know why I'm a Cowboy fan so I I've never understood them but okay anyway let's get to the next one comparing it to Finland is kind of ridiculous I mean the per capita game development in Finland is insane right so all right let's move on oh so this is a Mishka correction Ubisoft bench uh he implied that there were thousands of people sitting in an office doing [ __ ] all in between projects at at Ubisoft and we had

I I I don't know who this guy is but anyway he was an expert who said no the team is Thousands the bench is between like 200 300 you know about 10% of the workforce is sitting on the bench waiting for new projects and those people are actually getting training on new tools and Technology improving their skills so they're not sitting idle they're actually doing something that is actually by the way his story is more consistent with what I've heard I don't know why I let michiga go on that but I don't know where he got that information but he was wrong okay moving on all right going into some of the quick hits epic games has said it'll launch its game store and fortnite on iOS in the UK next year so the UK passed a law similar to the dma in Europe so remember brexit everyone so the UK is not part of the EU and so that's why it's kind of separated from what's going on with the EU dma laws so on X on Twitter Tim Sweeney added you know obviously with this free fort night said

is now we turning to UK in 25 weet turning to the EU in 24 the battle rages on to lift Apple's digital Iron Curtain from the US Australia Japan Korea Brazil and the rest of the world yeah you know I love you right but that was like the shittiest read of that statement I've ever heard right what do you mean no he says the battle rages on to lift Apple's digital Iron Curtain from the US Australia Japan Korea Brazil and the rest of the Free World like that's what he said you said it like you I don't know you like reading a recipe dude you go to you got to like get some anunciation going on he's like he's like throwing it out the gaunlet right now it's like [ __ ] you Apple we're gonna [ __ ] take it to you in any place in the world right anyway all right so now we're journalists and we're dramatic readers okay that's the way he wrote it that's not the way I I'm not he WR everything this way he's always yelling he's always yelling he's always screaming it might as well be all caps all right next time next time I

have a Tim quote I will do it in the style in the dramatic nature of Tim Sweeney okay all right next week summer game Fest so that is the basically the E3 replacement so it's on June 7th uh Friday of next week it is going to be broadcast and it's also in La if anyone's coming down uh to La for that lot of people in town for this event cuz it it actually feeds into the next thing so keeping on the trend and of announcing the announce as GTA did Activision was like I want to do that too so they have confirmed that Call of Duty Black Ops 6 will be officially revealed on June 9th at the Xbox showcase so the Xbox showcase will be part of IGN live which is the live event that they're having in LA from June 7th to June 9th so this is the fan replacement of e3 where they are opening it up and you can go and you there's you can play games and you can do all kinds

of stuff so IGN is trying to in a sense give players a place to go so this is why everyone is in La Phil Spencer is going to be here you know Laura crass you want to come down you want to hang out we can Heckle Phil Spencer you know during that presentation I think that would be kind of fun that sounds great I have brand marketing question Jen this has really bothered me it's called Call of Duty Black Ops 6 6 is a letter if we look at the Last Call of Duty Black Ops it was Black Ops Cold War we look at one before that it was Black Ops 4 number we look at Black Ops 3 it was Roman numeral two was Roman numeral what is with the inconsistencies in picking a damn name for this game good question actually oh that is a good question actually why didn't they use Roman numerals for six what's the issue what's going on it's too much like GTA that would be my Heckle that it's GTA 6 and it's Black Ops 6 maybe they did some research that found out that no one actually knows what Roman numerals are anymore that could be I think the Super Bowl has done done a lot for for America to understand

Roman numerals though no no pay attention to that [ __ ] no more dude x what maybe like the designers were like hey the six looks nice and we don't know what to do with the vi I don't know I actually have done research in the past on do you use numbers do you use dates like Madden and FIFA use dates 2024 2025 or do you use uh sub Brands you know Black Ops and then they keep iterating and so what I have found is the sequel nature can be really helpful to communicate to your existing audience like hey this is the next one you need to go out and buy it but it also limits your potential with new players because new players are like oh it's a sequel It's a threequel I've never played the first one so why do I want to get in on it now it's kind of the Final Fantasy challenge that they're having with the Remake that they're doing people are like uh well why would I buy the second one cuz I didn't play the first one or the 16th one

yeah I don't know if that answers your question but yeah I don't know what they were thinking dude I swear they do like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of research on naming conventions and then they flip a [ __ ] coin at the end of the day that's kind of my gut on it right they're just like yeah yeah this looks all right you know or some power that be I mean this happened to me when I was at EA back in the day it's like we did all this research and then Frank jabo's is like dude do it this way all right it's fine when I was talking to Don Matrix about his marketing team coming to him to rename what the second Xbox was and they did all like hundreds of thousands of dollars of research and they wanted to change the name from Xbox to the second iteration and he's like I don't care anything about your $200,000 research we're calling it Xbox something else and so that was an instant and that was smart that was brilliant no right yes and no right you and I would agree but I'm sure there are many people on the other side that were like like what

a stupid idea let's call it just whoever is the stakeholder just listen to whatever name they want and just do that because it'll save you a whole bunch of work naming sucks okay exol's state of play spring edition is out here are a few takeaways mobile games are half of all games spend in 2023 I think we kind of know that but good to see data on that and you know I love the Gen Alpha Trends it's a road map to where we should be going as we place our bets as what we're doing 73 % of gen Alfa Gamers play games on their phones and this is up from the 69% of gen Z folks who play games on their phones so the phone doesn't suck everybody make games on your phone and so the collab of the week we're going to get to this a little bit later because it's the squad Busters liveaction teaser trailer and trailer so good uh we'll get to that later all right Laura Investments and m&a all right couple quick ones Atari our favorite atar Atari acquired the intell

evision brand and their portfolio of games for an undisclosed sum it's part of atari's ongoing investment in its retro games business they had some previous Acquisitions digital Clips night dive except it did not affect the rights to the AO console which in television will continue to develop under an Atari license my favorite Nintendo has announced the acquisition of us-based work for hire Studio shiver entertainment and this is from from embracer so they got that from the embracer group again no we don't have any numbers they're hiding all the numbers shiver for those interested found it in 2013 and they did the ports of Mortal Kombat one and Hogwarts Legacy on intendo switch and I I didn't figure I couldn't figure out why that was a big deal and then I looked it up and at least hogwart's Legacy was not an easy Port because of the comparison and power between the switch and then the ninth generation console so the switch has uh

lower CPU and GPU power so they apparently did a very good job with kind of almost like their hands tied behind their back a bit Canada based developer Relic has raised funding from amona capital and it'll be used to maintain their independence after the SE separation from Sega in March of this year and then to the Moon again maybe us-based games distributor GameStop has raised 933 million and a new Equity offering program and the funds will support new acquisitions Investments and other strategic corporate initiatives this is [ __ ] gross dude the stock goes up on a meme and like and then they raise money as fast as possible from these morons that are buying the stock it's the meme Revolution again like you know speculative type environment so well their sock's going up for a meme and this news because the stock Rose 19% yeah I mean by the way it was up at like $50 for a hot second and then now it's back down to 20 off a base of like 10 it

should be a $5 stock this thing is a piece of [ __ ] Roy and kitty Roy and kitty posted the image of well what's the movie Dumb money is that the name of the documentary about the GameStop meme y it was really good actually and so the guy who started the whole meme for GameStop posted an image of a person it was a cartoon leading forward and so everyone thought oh man we're back in and so every you know all of the retail investors just just got back in and drove the stock up for GameStop Bed Bath and Beyond AMC a couple others too because it's you know now we call the stock market the casino because that's what it is people just betting all right last one VR is not dead Toronto based Sin Studio raised 2.5 million led by Hartman capital and the funds will go to building Tech to support its next time real time PVP VR combat game looking at all the Investments there's a lot of web

3 right now and more than I was expecting for VR I was surprised VR is dead it's it's dead so the only one I mean obviously the only people that keeping it alive is Facebook for sure whatever yeah all right Chris for this last one I think you need to take it so we don't get Laura fired well yes I have a mortgage thank you all right so the Australian Casino firm ARIS rat Leisure is looking to potentially sell Big Fish Games and plarium as part of a strategic review of its gamees business actually they renamed this thing pixel United which I didn't even know in 2021 basically combining both big fish and plarium and product mad Madness so they're relatively big publisher I mean it's almost like two billion in Revenue if you guys did not know and this was a huge strategic push and I actually met with this Aristocrat liketh years ago and they were really trying to diversify out of the traditional casino business which was really struggling particularly

during covid and so this was like a big push for them to do Acquisitions originally big fish and then also Plum and then obviously product Madness and one other smaller Studio recently and maybe some others so anyway the report says that they want to keep the casino products but get rid of everything else basically casino is around 65% of the business and so the rest of the 35 maybe approximately about 700 million in revenue and added two to three times multiple which is probably what you can get these days if not less because it's probably very unprofitable maybe 1.5 billion like this is the type of deal we're talking about potentially for them to divest outside of Social Casino so what do I think I think like we kind of look at the normal cast of characters for this business something like scopely moonactive maybe even the Chinese 10-cent netes because it's Australian company that that might allow them to get be involved it's not a US company I don't think anyway zinga's likely not in it because they need to fix their [ __ ] before they start making big Acquisitions and I think Take 2 is

probably done with that EA no [ __ ] way dude EA is [ __ ] done with mobile full stop just just it it's over right did you hear that they folded all of the big Brands back into the game teams dumb it's [ __ ] over is the yeah like death right yeah yeah there's no mobile [ __ ] at EA I'm sorry guys whoever works there it's just it's over attach yourself to the best products FIFA I don't know what else is out there still but other than that it's over no one likes mobile over there okay all right the real challenge with selling this type of business you know is well first of all plarium's what they're in in um Israel Israel Israel right and Ukraine right oh that's right yeah yeah or they were in Ukraine I don't know if they still are that's a tough locations right now in the world and then there's not like a lot of acquirers left that want to do transactions of this size in Mobile so I named a few so this it may be a tough sell but for aristocrat maybe it makes sense because I think their Core

Business is likely doing quite well and so I kind of looked at their p&l and they show actually they split out mobile so you can see that their business is Flatline to slightly declining on the revenue side for mobile but the profitability was [ __ ] right and so they dragged down the profitability by like 36 million Australian dollars in fiscal 23 I imagine it's not the casino business it's the other businesses that are dragging it but it's unclear so I can see why they want to do it so I think it's this kind of above average ass set and it could find a home outside of Aristocrat we'll see what happens it's really interesting possibilities any other comments from the peanut gallery Laura I'm um Embrace her Embrace her points a new CFO and Deputy CEO as uh Johan extrom steps down it's happening what is happening he's he's stepping down there it is Embrace her executive changes responsibility right I know but the CEO is still there he

owns all the chaires fair enough well they're just finding people who are really good at I guess restructuring right because it's a different Talent that's needed with what they said they're splitting it up right so don't need a different group of people to do that by the way it's a [ __ ] ridiculous split by the way it's none of those things are valuable at all period end of sentence all right moving on okay for mobile gamer. Biz the co-founders of play rcks are the 27th richest people in the UK according to Sunday Times rich list brothers eigor and Dimitri Buckman have an estimated personal Fortune of over $6.3 billion dollar dude by the way play RX is a private company they use this [ __ ] as their piggy bank they are just pulling money out of that [ __ ] thing on a on a yearly basis good for them dude that is baller right they don't need to go public dude they're worth 6.3 billion dude I thought you would like this story I dropped this in here for you gangsters dude gangsters love it all right uh on Saturn

news games industry layoffs surpassed 10,000 for 2024 by end of May we are starting to see some zombie companies too in terms of companies that are going to be really challenged in the next six to 12 months particularly on the blockchain side as new products are coming out but that none of them are really scaling so there'll be more added to this list I imagine yeah isn't this 10,000 by end of May more than all of last year I think is like the stat that I saw I think that sounds about right it's just accelerating which is sad and awful there's a lot of things funded by VCS that do make sense so we'll see what happens all right Amazon games is set to publish a AAA open world driving game developed by Maverick games that's what the world needs guys we need another racing game right like that's a huge Market this is like a 5% of the total AAA Market actually far less than that is racing games and so but we're going

to get another one we'll see yeah racing is a tough category I think what people don't really think about is that GTA killed racing because not only are you driving around in a car doing cool [ __ ] you get out and you have a whole other game experience and so it kind of has to be racing plus another genre to survive like Fast and Furious is that what you're saying like the the move from Fast and Furious to car movie to action movie is is what should be mirrored in video games and that's what GTA took that's kind of smart what if you could get out of the car you know it's open world I mean how how did Burnout Paradise do right because that's the template for this type of stuff do you remember ages ago so you're completely right that braing games sell the same amount every single year Need for Speed sells the same amount no matter what you do to marketing no matter what you do like even the most recent Need for Speed where they went a little bit crazier with the visual art style I think they put in motorcycles as well they had really cool Trails still basically the same amount of copies how do you grow that as a category and interesting mobiles exists completely separate from

this right they seem to have like unlocked something but I don't know what you do on HD I think you you have to do Burnout Paradise right this is the only upside yeah my general like thoughts on this is like something that we've talked about many times I don't know about the podcast but just generally is that racing games used to be the showcase for the tech right it was really easy to execute and see beautiful cars at the highest resolution possible and see them in an environment and that really showcases the new technology of the hardware but there are other things that show the technology and the hardware much better now which includes 3D Shooters right and so they just are less of a draw for people for the platform and so it's become more of an Enthusiast game than like a mass Market Style game to Showcase Tech that's kind of like the general yeah that makes sense makes sense as well this podcast is brought to you by heroic Labs you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather

than spending those precious company dollars on building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get it into your player hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is a battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scale for Success heroic Labs has your Tex app covered whether you're looking for worldclass back-end server an amazing game development framework Fantastic live Ops tool tooling or reliable Mass scalability heroic Labs has solutions for all of these challenges it's not just us at deconstructor of fun praising heroic Labs the company works with some of the world's biggest Publishers on the most beloved games focus on your game save a lot of money and avoid Tech risks with heroic labs this podcast is brought to you by data AI now you're asking didn't didn't they get acquired by sensor Tower they

did and that's awesome here's why whether do you Lov using data. a or sensor Tower the combined company will offer customers even stronger and more detailed insights on the full Digital customer Journey exciting times lie ahead as sensor Tower and data Jo en forces go to data. a or sensor tower.com and get on board with undeniably the best data partner in the business now back to the episode all right let's do more games Phil take us through what else is going on there is a new game out today it is a game that was previously in beta for a really short period of time before it was yanked we're really excited that it's coming out today I'm of course talking about multiverses which is out today from WB Games if you remember this is way back in August 2022 we were talking about this last week and we've covered it beforehand this is their Super Smash Brothers fighter attempt so you can play as LeBron James you can play as Bugs Bunny and you're going to engage in a somewhat of a a Super Smash Brothers like combat situation it's out today

it's kind of getting drowned in the squad Busters press but let's see how it performs it's on Steam so we'll have steam numbers it's on EGS as well let's see but congrats to the team for shipping this one out the door I don't know what changes they've made yet so it'll be interesting to see what they've done from August 2022 to now to see whether or not they think they finally got this thing shipped ready I don't know if anyone else can say anything about this one but I was really surprised that this is launching after two years I have a a buddy who's associated with this game in a good way and I'm happy to see more stuff like this right the the funny thing was he's like we get to have Jason from Friday the 13th in the game and I'm like how on Earth do you do a horror character next to Bugs Bunny next to you know Adventure Time so they actually kind of pulled it off he's a tank it's it's pretty interesting so let's see what they do I I wish this was on mobile to be honest with you it feels like a great mobile experience but it's more you know HD targeted which I don't know we'll see

Squad Busters also out today [ __ ] yeah let's go 40 million pre-registrations hit tons of brand spend I'm hearing the biggest launch in supercell history Buckle in we're talking about it later I don't know does this does this change the picture for mobile I don't know everyone's been really in a stinky mood in this industry since 2024 I'm seeing ex defyant hit numbers I'm seeing Squad Busters pumping I'm seeing Monopoly go going multivers is back from the grave I I don't know I I've seem good Eric we've been waiting for Content we've been waiting for new games that it feels like there's been a look to me at least especially in sometimes it feels like there's a desert so I'm like new stuff this is great last year was the most successful game with the most like highest quality hits in forever and but yeah okay maybe in the beginning of this year of 2024 we haven't seen as much kind of newness so I get that but from a mobile launch I think that this is truly

going to be the Pinnacle of I mean every marketer is going to be analyzing their strategy how did they roll this out the trailer is amazing did so they actually hit the 40 million pre- they hit the 40 million at least that's what the thermometer on my phone when I logged in to Squad Busters today said they launched a tweet excuse me so that that was a confirmation oh okay cool wow I projected that but good on them right like listen supercell needs a win and I'm glad they're getting it yeah multibillion dollar company needs a win with like historic franchises you know you know who does need a win Ubisoft and ex defiant has hit 8 million players in one week of gaming now this is from a website called Insider gaming I wasn't able to get to a more direct source it's it's not on Steam as we talked about beforehand it's on Ubisoft connect so I can't exactly vouch for this it seems like a pretty good number seems consistent with at least what The Vibes with the game are they also reported that 5 million was the internal first month Target now just to be clear 8 million unique players does not tell us anything about retention it just tells

us about I would argue marketing spend and you know how much of a disaster Ubisoft connect is but 8 million is a good start to this game we'll talk about it a little bit later the other thing that Ubisoft is doing is they're capitalizing on the success of Rainbow Six Siege which has been off to a blazing start in 2024 talk about u- shape in terms of Revenue if you look at the steam numbers active users are way up they hit historic highs recently they are launching a subscription service in June that's going to be $10 a month this will get you the battle pass it's very similar to fortnite crew if any of you are familiar with that that is a monthly subscription that epic offers that gives you the battle pass in addition to some additional MTX and cosmetic Goods I've always been confused about why mobile and HD games don't make the battle pass an actual subscription like this a recurring an automatic recurring charge this is something that's weirded me out forever I don't understand why supercell doesn't do this I don't understand why no one's running this AB test it's really weird to me I don't think this is going to be successful but you know why wouldn't you run this test this seems obvious well the last time I remember there so subscriptions in casual puzzle

games was a thing but it was a thing I want to say in like 2012 2013 and I know they did tests it was a long time ago they did not do as well now granted we've learned a lot since then I think there's been a lot of changes to what we sell this was like way before anything like battle passes existed this was things for like you could do a subscription and get like you know lives every month it would be interesting to run that test again now now that the so much monetization at least in puzzle and and mostly in Mobile has come a long way no I'm with you on that like we had a lot of subscriptions in that 2016 to 18 time before battle passes so I think that's a good call why don't you have your experiment group doing that come on uh we're working on we actually are going to be publishing an experiment later this week we'll probably we'll probably talk about next week I love to run stuff like that mobile games company dream games has surpassed 3 billion in player spending with nearly 100% of its Revenue coming from its Marquee title Royal match this game's on fire too we

haven't been able to cover this one this one's been growing too what with all this idfa headwinds no one gives a [ __ ] about that anymore fingerprinter is surviving dma's coming around even ex defy's getting downloads and not only that dungeon fighter mobile is out right it's become a Runway hit on iOS now remember we don't get good data from Android in China because the market is so fragmented but we can get decent data on Apple's IOS cuz of course they own distribution and it has already surpassed the daily revenue of 10 cents two Flagship titles honor of kings and Peacekeeper Elite that of course is pubg it has done 140 million in total revenue so far that's an estimate from nikco parners I get a little bit of a different estimate for censor Tower and at Magic had some different ones too but so far like look it it looks like this game which has been you know long awaited almost forever that's killed it in HD and if you look at the old super data this is always in the top 10 Global Revenue rankings finally on mobile and it looks like it's it's pulling away in terms of Revenue I am uh following this

one closely it's definitely one of the whole thesises I'm running for both Nexon as well as tensen weing waves launched it's an open world action RPG it's similar to genin impact it's number one in downloads worldwide it's developed by curo games and it was previously they were developer of publish Gray Raven which did about over 100 million on iOS alone this is a multiplatform launch let's see if this one sustains this is supposed to be another shot at genin heavy story based similar style in terms of art similar style in terms of Graphics Big Brand marketing spent let's see if they can take a chunk out of genin which by the way genin is not doing so bad I don't know reports of its death have been have been greatly exaggerated no one reported it dead there's some cannibalization we should talk about what is the relative impact of cannibalization between Star Rael and Kenshin Square Enix will be shutting down action RPG Dragon Quest Champions and puzzle game Dragon Quest keshi kesi in Japan on July 30th and 31st

respectively rest in peace Dragon Quest may your IP survive well thank you for all of those updates why don't we dig in a little bit more to ex defiant your new favorite game although isn't it just like Call of Duty Eric you've been playing this too right only a little bit unfortunately I you played a little bit I know oh I'm a I'm a junkie already uh this is yeah yeah so I finally got a game we with the technical problems last time they seem to have scaled I don't know what you're making of these downloads but 8 million uniques is not bad when I looked at apex's numbers which are also publicly declared when that surprise launched they did 10 million in 72 hours so obviously it's not hitting Apex scale but there's something there and I've been reading a lot of the early critical reviews and I would agree with a lot of them like this is a hark back to old arcade Shooters the game feels very quick and I think this is actually something a lot of the reviewers have missed if you go back and you play Old firstperson Shooters and you compare it to where exify is right now Shooters have become so much more sophisticated so much more complicated

to give an example like the slide mechanic is almost by default now which I think Apex Legends really helped at least popularize so you can slide on the floor when you crouch and then you're running which unlocks like a whole new dimension to the gameplay you also have the ability to aim down sights when you both Crouch and when you're standing so there's a lot of things that like really help speed up combat for X defiant it feels like it's very much based on Black Ops which is really weird to me there was an early Black Ops comparison I I think the skew was rumored forever right Eric the the Black Ops 6 skew is supposed to be the hero shooter skew yeah so this is almost like a you know a realization of that it's it's traditional three three lane map design which we've seen all the time in Call of Duty they have Emoji reacts that's really fun I've been dying for that forever so when you get killed you can send an emoji in the kill feed so you can say like oh I'm sad I'm happy I'm angry i' would love to see that turned into a cosmetic of some sort where you could collect more of them there's all of the Ubisoft which I know everyone is dying to play you can you can play all

of ubisoft's dead games you can play C Splinter Cell if you want to you can play all of those early characters ultimately like the problem with this game is that I have no idea who it's for and I don't understand why it's coming out in this day and age and I've been trying to figure out like how would you approve a game like this and so it was announced I think it was at least 20 21 21 or 20 if you remember back then they also had hyperscape so if you think back to like being in Ubisoft exact looking at this game trying to think about like what are your bets and so right now you have Rainbow Six Siege which is absolutely killing it it's one of the most important parts of your life service portfolio and I think what you do is you make three bets and I think that's what they ended up doing right so they they made the Rainbow Six Siege extension game do you remember what that was quarantine that was the co-op one yeah that was no one ever talks about that so that was one of the bets they made they made the hyperscape bet we all know how that went although that was an interesting experiment and then I think they made this bet but all those bets were made relatively similar in terms of time span and so now I understand a little bit more about how you could say like you know [ __ ] it like why not attack Call of Duty like this why not

try to do a free-to-play Arena shooter you know okay we only need we only need this amount of scale to be profitable you kind of do some of the back of the envelope math and it's like okay I I feel like I could convince myself that this isn't a half bad idea I don't predict long-term success though yeah the only problem with your thesis is that this was the team from San Francisco which is probably the most expensive team on the planet oh it is yeah so Montreal is not involved in this at all this is just SF I would imagine it's multiple teams but the SF team was the team rocki supposedly is the big team on this so that makes sense to me because the thing that is blowing my mind with this game is why do they just take more [ __ ] from all their other first person shooters so to give you an example there is literally no end of round screen what I mean by that is they don't give you a score breakdown so you don't know when you win or lose how much that Amplified your score or how much score you got for kills I don't even know if I'm getting a flat XP amount if I win a game there's literally no screen all you see is this little bar that goes up for your weapon progression there's no account level progression as far as far as I can tell you're only upgrading weapons and the battle pass it just

feels like it's not done like you need to have more in 2024 besides a halfway decent arcade shooter they they just sell Cosmetics this is the definition of red ocean you know it's like there's so many damn [ __ ] games like this it's like they can't differentiate themselves and they're only going to come short of what players expect from this type of game so it's like I don't know this seems like another one of those Ubisoft projects that should never been green lit right but they executed well more or less I would say this I don't think we're going to talk about exify ever again uh rest in peace uh but I do think there is this very real question especially since the finals has ended up in the place it has which is not great which is what comes after Battle Royale that is what people are trying to solve right now we had this huge paradigm shift it at first-person shooters it absolutely just ate them um what comes after Battle Royale and I don't think anyone has that answer yet and I think these I don't want to say this is an attempt it clearly is not an attempt but

I think the finals was an attempt and I hope we see more attempts of how we mature the firstperson shooter Market because it it feels a little boring step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exola provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition maned subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola empowering game developers to achieve Global success 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 fer the leader in Mobile contribution and marketing analytics that allows you to

measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps flyer where your app's potential meets performance from boring to the other game that you are in love with and by the way way this is how you remind me of what I really am come on you've got to watch the trailer for Squad Busters and then go sing that song in your head by nickel back please stop singing stop torturing our audience for Christ's sake my Lord can't sing it's that's why it's fun all right Phil Squad Buster us I mean what what more we have to say here I think this launch trailer is pretty interesting I'm interested in your take on this gen like this launch trailer with Chris Helmsworth you know all these actors You' been talking Willer now all these different actors this just gives me shades of Marvel snaps

celebrity yeah and but but here's the thing we we heard this was negative we heard not negative from the team but that cost a lot of money and in many ways Marvel St may not be profitable right now because they dump so much money into brand marketing this to me is exactly where I draw the line marketing this this is where I draw the line right right here right here big big line okay so first of all the Samuel L Jackson spot got 13 million views on their YouTube channel and they cut that asset up in tons of different ways to use it for UA they also got a lot of out of category PR for that the challenge is it's a freaking ccg game which appeals to like five people in the world you being one of them what is different in this particular case is that this is to your admission is a bit more of an accessible game that allows more people to come into this and so by going big by breaking into the Zeitgeist which is they're trying to do with this kind of spot that's the idea of brand marketing

and awareness play is we're going to go beyond Gamers we're going to reach out there and try to attract more and more people creating a massive I mean they I think in our slack Channel they talked about the shoot was for three days it's a f minute trailer they're going to use this everywhere in all of their Assets Now listen is having Chris Hemsworth hem Jong Christina RI will Arnette and alawi Koli I don't know the voice of Moana you know Laura helped me out on pronunciation Ali cavalo thank you because I uh suck at pronunciation having all of those folks now that is an ex like this is an expensive expensive spot and a three-day shoot holy crap like I can only imagine that just to make that piece we're talking between 5 and7 million like I'm just guessing unless it5 and7 million that's it [ __ ] sign off just for just for the production of that spot so not for Chris

Helmsworth salary how much does he cost no there's no there's no way that I mean each one of them's probably taken a million bucks so what what would you sum this up as in terms of total cost to put this together 5 to1 million five to for the whole thing salaries whole K and Kaboodle yeah but that's not media like paying for the that's not media I'm just talking about the core production to get that asset done and delivered then you have to put media behind it so there's above the line which is all the media below the line which is the cost of the ad itself including a 3-day production shoot and and talent but I think we have the framework though right if we if we know the creative cost 5 to 10 then we evaluate on a creative basis how much is like the next best creative cost and how much does the next best Creative Drive in terms of traffic like at least we I think I think we have a framework to figure out whether or not this makes sense doesn't always work like that you you never quite know what is going to work so you keep trying to compare comp Performance Marketing to Brand marketing so brand marketing is awareness

marketing because all all marketing is Performance Marketing I'm going to take one at of seer's Playbook sorry go ahead argue this back I'll oh Jesus CHR oh my God here we go all right in a sense you are always driving something along the funnel right so you're trying to get people aware of your game so that they are interested so that they will try it and then tell their friends about it right like that's moving down through the funnel and you develop content and assets and parts of your campaign that are specific to each of those phases because you're not trying to get somebody to take the same action as they move through the funnel so it's not like I see Chris Hemsworth as the Barbarian which was pretty funny in his Australian accent and oh I'm going to go and like download the game right away and tell all my friends the first thing is like oh that's really funny I want to learn a little bit more about that I'm going to go click on the page what is this thing all about that's the action that you're trying to take to move them through the funnel then you have additional Assets

in the middle that then convert you to go lower down the funnel that's the goal and that's why I tell you that not every single asset is meant to be I see and I click and I'm I'm playing the game now some people might argue that doesn't make sense marketing over thousands of years has said that's the formula that we go after and that's how we do it I think that's totally fair I wouldn't say that isn't the viable way to think about marketing I completely agree with that right like that's why we have trailers and movies you'd be stupid not to spend any any money and like pre- ramping that up and moving people through the funnel totally makes sense at the end of the day there's a cost to move a unit a person through that entire funnel and that's UA and then at the other side of the equation there's LTV and I think we have to figure out how much it costs to move someone through that entire funnel and then ultimately how much money do we think they're going to be able to make and I would say when we have situations like this we still at least have to create the model even if we can't measure individually each individual part of that funnel and how many people we moved from part A to Part B from Part B to part C having the funnel to me and

having the model is really responsible because I think enforce discipline and forces us to think about relative costs and benefits they didn't have to put 10 million into this marketing campaign they could have done anything they wanted with 10 million ultimately like they want to make return for their capital and I don't know was 10 million the best maybe I actually don't know 10 million actually doesn't seem that bad to me I might sign on this like to your point like you can use these creatives you can slice them up you can use them across anything timately like what is the difference in cpis and ltvs from the users who click on this ad versus the other ones that's at least one way we can start to attribute some Revenue even if we don't capture some of that early propensity stuff sure again you're not going to evaluate this necessarily with a CPI because it's not meant to be that lower level conversion tactic the other way to look at this is to say okay how much revenue do you think that they will get in the year a billion dollars like what what do you think the first year for Squad Busters is going to be at

least 250 million that gives supercell that the record year it's around brawl Stars I would have said a bit higher so 300 all right 300 so 30 million is 10% and that's about what you would take to do you know some of the production assets maybe it's even five so then you have 15 million so the 10 million for this spot 5 million for some of the other creative that you would develop the support the campaign is probably you know like a reasonable assumption in terms of a to S which is your advertising to sales ratio now a lot of people have different opinions on this like oh it should only be 1% it should be less that's just my you know back of the envelope math to say that that's the typical amount that you would look at as you're creating your marketing budget remember that scopely came out and said that they spent 25% of the two billion on uh marketing and that marketing included everything included cost of production and media itself that's just

how I kind of look at it and looking at it like that that makes a ton of sense okay question Jen do you think this was money better well spent than doing multiple posts from the Kardashians because I think the 5 to 10 million is probably about five posts from Kim which do you think was better I think I'll take this creative uh this this is pretty good humor is great you know humor is a way to get this audience you know there was a moment in the trailer where this this guy in the background was holding up a sign and the sign says I am here to appeal to a younger audience the tongue-and-cheek nature of this is is what they need to do to try to break out of just the you know the core gaming Market that is their typical fan they're trying to go bigger which what Crest says all the time like how does Xbox how does PlayStation you know grow Their audience they have to reach outside of the core audience that buys gam so it's the same thing here they want to go beyond their supercell traditional audience try to

get new people in that's how they want to grow I I don't think why does this do that because they've always done celebrity stuff remember they had the Liam niss Super Bowl ad from way back when for Clash of Clans they've always had strong brand marketing like I remember their early job ads always used they always had this like South Korean brand marketer position it's like do you know about you know warthogs and like malls how that can drive traffic you're fit for us like they they've always been on the up and up on this I don't think this is new for them but like when you say like we need to reach Beyond traditional Gamers I I agree I want to grow the market but but I would say like those marginal Gamers those marginal people they're reaching have low ltvs and high cpis because they're at the margin by definition there's a big pool you can already swim in with the gamers we have well they're not ignoring the big pool they're already getting them with everything that we've already been talking about everyone who plays one of their games had a massive pre-registration campaign where they got a bunch of stuff if they went and and got Squad Busters so they have tactics and plans that are actually very very low cost if not free to convert their

existing audience into players and so they've taken all of the money that they got for free imagine the conversion that they're going to get on that 40 million preist and imagine most of those prees came from inside of existing games so they took that money and put it against okay how do we go bigger how do we grow our audience and I think it's super smart what they're doing I think next week Jen you should do a side-by-side comparison on views between super collab with baby shark versus this all of their collabs like are crushing it I don't know you know if they've got kind of new marketing wisdom going on of like hey we need to take ourselves left seriously we need to partner with other brands but it all seems to be working and resonating and Their audience is really eating it up so there's one more aspect I would like to cover in terms of squad Buster so we already we already have the Deep dive in terms of podcast but there was a section that's come up when I've talked to people over and over again which is cannibalization and my initial understanding of cannibalization was similar to the one that Eric has mentioned on the podcast beforehand it's

when we look at genin and when we look at star rail we see that they're not stacking Revenue in fact the quarter over quarter revenue from mihoyo after star rail's release is basically flat when we include star rail in fact it's actually astonishing it's some 100% cannibalization I was like okay that's not a good sign same game same genre a lot of things are the same there's a large aspect of cannibalization that's possible I look into AFK Journey we've been following that for a while AFK Journey's impact act on AFK Arena has been zero zero in fact AFK Arena may actually be increasing in terms of active users over the same period that AFK Journey has launched so those are very different story in terms of cannibalization and I dove a little bit deeper into the genin star rail story and despite the fact that there was cannibalization in terms of Revenue if we looked at active users active users are way up when we stack both of those games together they are not cannibalizing players itself it seems like they're cannibalizing revenue and those to me are two wildly dient stories and I think there's an impact here when

we think about when we think about this game and the impact it might have with brawl Stars you can't really point to genin like where where are the cannibalization stories that we can point to as this being the case I just don't think they're real and when I look at the genin situation I think really that's a that's a midcore RPG story in terms of Revenue what happens in the life cycle these vertical progression games which is exactly what AFK Journeys um one of their product managers I think maybe not the product manager I don't know the title exactly they had interview that was recently translated we get a chance to cover on the podcast but it was a really fasting interview I talked about how a lot of these games just hit these this really soft amotization point you know around six to eight months if you're kind of this this midcore squad RPG um and I felt it as well when I play midcore Squad RPGs and Eric I know you've played R like you you've probably hit this too right it's like when you when you've ascended your characters you're not quite sure what to do there's not a lot of vertical progression they keep adding more and more gear systems it seems like they don't really have an end game figured out here and so they hit these like really weak mization points I think everything that that we've talked about in terms of cannibalization between Star Rail and genin is a midcore squad RPG

medic collection story and I don't think that that is going to be applicable here towards Squad Busters and brawl star I don't expect cannibalization maybe some hiccups in the beginning just because there's so much brand spend that I think could crowd stuff out but I don't I don't see the calization story I think we have two diverging stories here I don't see it being the case yeah I just look you're right if you believe these numbers from sensor Tower by the way that the uh the user base went up dramatically I mean that almost double right with the between Mio's game so that's interesting so that means that the spending got split between the two products probably because it's probably a lot of the overlap same audiences potentially right I'm torn I think I think that's one explanation again I I think there's something to Squad RPGs and their life cycle here that's really important and I'll be interested to see we don't have enough of a Time series for AFK journey and AFK arena in terms of Revenue so right now I'm just looking at active users um I'd like to look more at the revenue in the long run but revenue for AFK Arena still feels pretty positive too it doesn't feel like there's been cannibalization there so yeah actually

you know what I'm I'm a little more confused on this one but I do know we have two very diverging stories yes that I agree I think they're different genres to some degree I mean more or less this is a reskin I mean the the Mio stuff is just a reskin um I know there's some different game playay mechanics but the monetization design is the same like collecting characters and stuff but my perspective from a finance and business perspective is that they expected this to grow their overall revenue and it has not right from MiO right so like 1 plus one supposed to equal two but it's equaling one right so like that's not good from a revenue perspective like that's not the plan the plan is to grow right so you're right it may be because squad-based games end up you know getting you get burnt out on spend we're kind of seeing that but not really if you look at like yeah the game but like it's going to be interesting because again if it does only monetize at 20 cents for download or a dollar the challenge is revenue can

go down if you're moving your audience from one game that monetizes extremely well to a game that doesn't monetize well that's not good that's not only cannibalization that's like destroying Revenue right um I don't know if that's the case you seem to think that that that monetization is going to be strong here's a chart that I would I would share with you because we do we do video now we do video now right so we can look at cumulative lifetime Revenue across all of supercell's products and this was one of the most interesting charts I pulled when I was was doing the squad Busters piece and so it it tells a very interesting story the game that has by far killed it across super cells portfolio and it's not even close has been Clash of Clans so Clash of Clans is sitting you know around7 billion in terms of Lifetime Revenue after 140 months and there was really this incredible inflection period from month 20 to month 40 since their launch where they had a crazy s growth curve period and when you look at Clash Royale which is the second performing game in supercell's portfolio they've really been struggling they didn't have this inflection point I've talked about this beforeand but like supercell is really

straight like Clash Royals decline but then you look at brawl Stars brawl stars is just like this little we were talking about how successful it's been I mean look at look at the chart that's it that's that's what 50 million gets you in terms of Lifetime Revenue you know it's like hang in there bud you you've got what 60 more months to reach to reach 8 billion um I I I think Squad Busters can fit in fit in here pretty nicely and I think I think Clash Royals Clash Royals decline is a lot of again going back to those Squad RPG mechanics the the ccg mechanics that it has and I I think when you look at Clash of Clans remember it's a very consumables based economy and I think Squad Busters is trying to integrate that that consumables economy so when you think about the chief designer of squad Busters he was the one on Clash of Clans for the match majority is here he was supercell's top design Chief and he's made consumables a large part of this economy and that's why I think it's sustainable and I don't think it's going to have this Clash Royale hangover period we will see yeah yeah no I I like your analysis I think that anytime you know back when I was on

FarmVille and we were launching a new CityVille or another vill we were like well it you know how do we forecast against that do we do we forecast that we're going to be down and cannibalize for a little bit while players try the other game or do we forecast up because there's more people coming into the you know the overall kind of franchise or in supercell's case like the overall supercell games are all known and and this one actually showcases the rest of the universe right you've got the chicken from Heyday you've got you know the different characters from the other IP with the idea of the mini miners the mini mini metaverse that's right that's the right what I'm looking for Multiverse is on the brain today so you get the ability to try to introduce players to your your other IPS I think in any case you anytime you see a you know competition you have to realize that your audience is going to go try the other thing because that's what they're going to do and so you know the strategy that you might want to deploy is what do you do inside of clash Royale and Clash of Clans to keep players

coming back so that sure go try that other game but we're going to have really cool stuff for you here so come in check with check in with us get that cool stuff go try it but we have massive cool things for you here and by the way in next month we have a really cool big update so you have to do the job if you are one of the other games to make sure that you're letting your audience know that you you respect their abil to try something else but you want to come back here because this game is getting better too if I were the other games I'd be like oh my God I need to make sure I've got really cool stuff happening so you don't um lose them permanently to that new game all right all right with that I think we're done all right everybody thanks for hanging in there and see you next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor

fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening [Music]