TWIG #300 🎉🎉🎉 SPECIAL EPISODE 🎉🎉🎉

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hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode this week in games 300 milestone for us um we are gonna touch on one little thing of news but we're really going to celebrate all of our favorite moments from the past 300 episodes going back into the way back machine storytelling we might even go off on tangents most likely we will so let's get right I'm Jen Dono uh strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jade INF Inferno and today we have Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting let's cook I don't even get that one but all right fine well that's your catchphrase uh Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting Group what's up punks Mishka kov founder of deconstructor of fun twig one alumni hola hola I'm back in Spain

and Ethan Ley I Amell so excited you are my origin story onto the Pod so I I'm glad that you're here so I can thank you directly a little bit later I've been crunching like crazy for two months and uh just hit a major Milestone on Monday so episode 300 had to come back for it had to play Hook from work I need to stop working so [ __ ] hard we got Ethan back cuz we thought this is the Greek episode we're going to do the sparta version so everybody just do face PL cuz like 300 yeah let me find my all all your abs this is the 300 um what I have is not technically referred to as abdominal muscles it's okay it's okay CGI all right well um unfortunately Laura's on a plane and Adams can't be here we'll see if maybe we can get like a little clip from them I I do have a a Laura origin story that I'll work in a little bit later maybe one of of you can

tell an Adam origin story so it is the five of us today let me just start with a very quick shill because I just need to give a huge thanks to Ed zist and his class for having me guest lecture at his USC advanced games business class this week I get to be a guest Yoda and show up in front of a bunch of students and have them think that I have smart things to say which is questionable of course so for those who don't know Ed he's just like a wealth of stories he was a huge uh marketing and Publishing career in games and also in the toy industry we actually have a a similar background so he was the head of publishing who launched fortnite so his story times on launching fortnite and working at Epic at that moment in time is fascinating he said he will unfortunately never come on a podcast and tell those stories publicly so come to LA and like let's have dinner he's still kind of really in touch with all of this marketing stuff we geeked out in front of the class about how modern marketing has evolved from just doing like the big bang marketing uh he's kind of like one of those folks who believes in that

influencer Community marketing even that's how they launch fortnite so really fascinating there in any event I want to do like a little Public Service Announcement and ask the audience a favor for those experienced industry folks really consider doing some pro bono or Yoda time with the next generation of game makers go guest lecture at a university Mentor someone I'm paying it forward by doing these kinds of things because somebody helped me get started and get breaking into the industry is tough everyone second it's really good to get their perspectives they are viewing the game industry in a really different way and so you can learn a lot so it ends up being really mutually beneficial take the Yoda challenge let me know how it goes I I was just at San Jose State few few weeks ago and did a presentation on uh the mobile market and it is really fun to talk to like a young group of people that surprisingly had very little experience with games in general like as a group but some of them were really really into it so it was really cool whether it was this class are a

different one I I did a guest lecture a couple semesters ago when um Paul B do Super Fan was teaching I'm a USC Alum and so I you know whenever anybody there asks me for a favor I'm happy to yes I did Paul's class as well so Paul is busy now because he's the EP on League of Legends so he's he is not doing his poor guy that sounds like an easy job that sounds like a fun easy stress-free job that anyone would be totally happy to take I've I've done a couple of these like school things and what I've noticed especially when you go into the schools that have these sort of a game design programs is that they're not really interested in the business side of games they're more like it almost feels like they're really into this Indie path that they're being taught to and so it's interesting and challenging to tell them about the business side of gaming which is you know pretty important because I think we keep talking to the wrong audience like I think we keep talking to like these game specific schools but like that's why I love the USC program

like I'd love if we talk to like our other disciplines outside of games like just a just a marketing class talk about games from marketing class like what PMS could do in an economics class or an economy designer like that'd be an amazing conversation I'm on what Eric has kept mentioning which is like broaden broaden the audience broaden the appeal yeah there is a um Miggy uh Marshall interactive games something I don't know so maybe I'll Loop you guys in um they're asking for guest speakers and pump PMS out that school just like pumping PMS exactly like Zinga Jun like they just keep Zing traines all right well thank you for that chill all right so Phil do you want to talk about this vgi chart is that you let's wait till Adam is back I mean Spectre divide just H it doesn't look good it doesn't look good wait hold on a minute they weren't able to get any more users than that no there's just no scale so Mountaintop games just to set the stage a little bit um

VC backing going after csgo I think they've been cooking for a couple years now I don't know how much they've raised I don't know Eric if you know off top of your head what their their lifetime R we covered that a lot by the way by the way I got a call from one of the VC's like after your uh expose he was unhappy to say the least we talked about this on the podcast how it's just not tracking at all and now we're going to do it again like like give it some time you know like like anyway so talking about the VCC it's pretty easy to say who has invested into this so it's one of these that has called you so on on this chart this is showing under 50K concurrence on Steam at launch as compared to over 200,000 for the finals I just threw on some games on here the finals being one of them once human and the first descendant so you know wide wide variety of things interestingly enough they all started with similar ccus at around 200 250

they've of course have declined since then they're holding on to like some some decent positions like the first descendant is actually doing doing decently right now once human has kind of been the story I don't think there's been a lot of coverage of but its Decay curve hasn't been as extreme it hangs around the top 30 right now but Spectre divide just very low absolute number and the trend line doesn't look that much better either and I said at least I want to give this a little bit more time and check in on it but they're not stacking da and the trend line doesn't look anything spectacular so not quite sure what to make of this one is this an early access launch or is this a launch launch I mean not that there in freeto play there's not much difference I'd say but you know how are they positioning this launch I don't know off the top my head that is an interesting question though that we can look up in real time while you're doing that know well maybe we should stop beating up on this game then if we don't know it's a full launch it's a full launch it's not early access is it fun is it a fun game um I think it has an interesting thesis uh

you know using the multiple characters in a tactical shooter that opens up what I thought this audience would be interested in which is more tactical stuff more strategy stuff I think it's polished the gun play looks fine I don't know if like these single X Factor games which you see come out here and there I I don't know if it's enough I don't know if it's enough I just I'm not quite sure how to reconcile this with valerant and really compare those thesises yet so I would say under construction well I mean would wouldn't you say that anything that comes out of Riot or blizzard has an unfair advantage in terms of starting that they have a built-in super fandom and audience and fans in the press and they have every advantage that gives something like valerant an incredible ability to launch that that same game launched by an unknown new VCB studio with no PR the exact same game would not have performed the same way if it the finals isn't that great either I mean it's the same story too right but the I mean the finals invested heavily and there was a lot story and narrative

and they used their connections to get cover and they had a publish right they built an audience they had a publisher you mean nexton yeah at least they had someone so I guess you know do you take this away as a marketing story though because the the problem the Decay curve doesn't look that much better either I would say both I was just saying for how to reconcile this with valerant like you can't compare anything launched out of Riot to anything launched out of somebody not Riot there's one thing that is launched out a riot that doesn't seem to be working and that is according to investig game they had the big article about X Riot teams and those are the only ones that are apparently not you know very successful when they enter the the startup mode they had this big article like because they exactly because they're used to launching their products with the riot super fandom these are all exactly the same type of game where they are T Shooters yeah they're all Shooters but they're all Independents right more or less except for the finals but like yeah we're not comparing this to steam I to

valerant or something that comes from Val or something all right well yeah oh no once human has nutes behind them so of course it makes sense why once human in the finals were able to get into 200 thousands of concurrence these are Big Publishers who know how to Market fre that's that's what we're talking about the first descendant in the same boat yeah who did first descendant descendant yeah Mountaintop raised $86 million and they're backed by pretty big investors so but they're s it's not like it's not like this is like a a startup out of your like smallmon are we are we all talking on the same page here like every single [ __ ] release from these VC back companies is [ __ ] a disaster of Epic Proportions latest round of 30 million beginning of this year okay so here's what's really super interesting the finals is self-published so once human is Net's first descendant is Nexon these two companies know how to Market free to play games on PC regardless maybe we

should ease off of mountain top like let's let's give them time to uh like I don't think we're like critical of the of the game per se I think we're critical of the investment totally like I I I think the studio still I mean nothing nothing is written off yet you got to see at least you know take the temperature you know it's a little cold let's let's move on to something even more yeah let's let's keep going um soan yesterday EA had investor day which was September 17th the Senior Team all got up and gave presentations like you know fullon you know in-person presentation a few highlights they announced a modern-day Next Level Battlefield uh while kind of apologizing for two other really underperforming battlefields Community testing program coming out in early 25 they talked a lot about the Sims and how they're investing in the platform because basically there's no Sims 5 coming there's also um a movie in the works cres you'll love

that they've been trying to make a movie about The Sims since I have been there when Pat O'Brien used to go to La all the time and try to get a movie I was like just stop stop stop I agree I don't know what a Sims movie is going to be so on sports sports was really weird because they they talked about this EA Sports app that was like this socially driven experience that was about like predictive modeling that seemed to indicate like did you if you haven't seen this um it was basically how are we going to go and help the betting Market is kind of it's kind of what that felt like and then finally finally they said it was like an investor report where they said AI like 2,000 times so they talked about how AI is going to drive efficiency expansion and transformation Cris I I couldn't stop thinking about you I was dying to hear what you think about Ai and why a strategy guy got up and talked have you I haven't seen that before like

I had of strategy is out there at an investor day go for oh my God so I got a text from one of my buddies and he was like Hey you know are you gonna be watching the presentation today and I'm like why in the [ __ ] are you texting me this and I'm like oh my God he all he's trying to do is incite my wrath right because I think he kind of understood what was happening at this meeting right so I watched it and look and I'll be [ __ ] honest like the first three or four speakers were fine Laura melli Andrew the sports guy was really good I thought the last guy was a little bit [ __ ] schmy and and not very genuine but whatever right he's a [ __ ] executive Ada e what do you expect right and by the way for those of you that're giving Fe I expect a strong vest game what oh P like a Patagonia vest sorry call back to previous shut the [ __ ] up Ethan all right and by the way for any of you guys that are out there giving feedback that

I'm a little bit too mean these days or too aggressive please fast forward five minutes you [ __ ] cupcakes just just do it just do yourself a favor okay um so anyway I can accept almost any type of content from these type of events my expectations are extremely low like I'm not going to get any meaningful insights from what's happening out there and for the most part EA hit it you know or slightly exceeded my low expectations but I have to draw the line somewhere right for the record the chief strategy offer Mahir is evidently a very nice guy right he has surrounded himself with the [ __ ] Legion of Ivy League douchebag Consultants from Bane and McKenzie in his ivvy Tower in Toronto you know he is clearly much smarter than I ever will be and he's far more eloquent no doubt and has a much better BMI but the audacity The Audacity Of This McKenzie [ __ ] douchebag getting up there and trivializing game development with this all his AI [ __ ] you know

this is still an art it's still like interactive it's still a developer Le type organization and not to mention the whole pitch about his AI [ __ ] the democratization of game development doesn't make a lot of sense anyway the notion that you could double your revenue and maintain bargins with AI tools and ugc is just not necessarily true you know the business model is not as sound right the margins are smaller the costs of moderation the quality control all these things like the technology investment things that you know Roblox and epic have been doing it's [ __ ] expensive and all of his spe talk about this AI [ __ ] seems like it was created in some kind of strategy lab you know this is like the 2015 project you know like they have no idea what the [ __ ] they are talking about is what the whole point here right but actually regardless of that like I could understand him getting up there and and waxing poetic about [ __ ] around AI fine right he's a strategy guy he's a Mackenzie guy he thinks high futin right

but he has absolutely no credibility at all about talking about game development dude the guy has been in the game industry for four [ __ ] years the rest of his experience is 10 years in McKenzie you know like this is what's wrong with his industry is that people like him are speaking out of turn right he has literally spent 10 years in McKenzie he has absolutely no reason to do this and then on top of that he has a team of like 30 to 50 people that are creating game prototypes right all the games that were created in that presentation evidently is his team up in Toronto building this [ __ ] right so like how in the [ __ ] did that happen right I I don't get it I don't understand how this is where we're at right now right I don't understand how Laura and Andrew or [ __ ] Vince impella or any of these like people that have been in industry for decades could let this kind of thing happen in a presentation with this kind of reach it doesn't make sense EA has thousands of thousands of developers that are more

qualified to talk about this [ __ ] right dude [ __ ] the mail room clerk has more experience in gaming than this guy you know what I mean it's like I don't understand how they could think that this is okay you know I'm sure like developers are EAA losing their goddamn Minds listening to this guy talk you know sure I mean he has 15% body fat high cheekbones he's a handsome man right but gez he's not the he's not the right guy to be talking about the future of game development I mean doesn't make sense you know so anyway what I think is likely he's trying to get visibility right clearly he's trying to get in front of investors because that he maybe he's on deck to be the next CEO H so help them God right you know that that's the only reason you put a strategy guy up there talking about game development I mean it does it doesn't make any sense at all his Ascension has been relatively quick he started off as a VP he's now like in the sea Suite in four [ __ ] years with no experience in gaming I can't imagine this gives him any credibility with Studios I think this is

like a deterrent for him like I I think this is a super negative for him they should have Vince up there or like anybody in this organization you know the thousands of developers but anyway this is where we're at right now with the business right this little sick Willy guy gets up there and starts talking [ __ ] about AI which he doesn't know what he's talking about I don't think but anyway all right that's where I'm at with this it's very very frustrating and you you know what's funny is I listen to the whole thing and I'm like hey this isn't bad what the [ __ ] is he talking about like and then all of a sudden he gets up there starts talking Ai and I lost my [ __ ] I couldn't even sleep last night this gu pissing your cereal what the [ __ ] Jesus man this is thect guy he seems like a completely nice guy do you have a problem with his actual strategy that's what I can't figure out maybe he's not the right guy saying it but do you have a problem with what he said oh no the whole AI thing is absolute [ __ ] the ugc AI like enabling yeah no I have a problem with

that strategy why is that [ __ ] like the the broader framework was to monetize and really grow GDP around communities which is how I saw that EA Sports app which was weird but that is a strategy and the ugc stuff makes a ton of sense I mean the Sims Battlefield skate like they have a ton of franchises that could take advantage of this I don't think skate is big enough to grow a meaningful ugc Community yeah like ugc communities are around millions and millions of users and they have some projects they have some things ready to go this this makes sense it's not out of nowhere no but it it's so [ __ ] early and they haven't done anything and again when like 30 or 50 like [ __ ] McKenzie guys are up in Toronto [ __ ] making prototypes for games like what the [ __ ] has happened yeah that's stupid I mean we can agree that one's dumb I mean there's no development for the strategy group at EA I mean that that yeah that going what would you have them do

instead though no actually you made some good points though actually I listened I read through your thing already it's like I think he's actually doing a good job on the strategy side to some degree right except he's going after licenses that are completely dead like Star Wars and Marvel right now doesn't seem like a smart move I don't even know if that was part of his strategy because he's only been there for like a hot second right but like going after Battlefield doubling down on Sports like okay I get it right like those are pretty good that's exactly what they should be doing yeah but they should be building more teams and building more [ __ ] right that's what they should be doing and instead they're not really doing that right they're now going to rely upon ugc as their pipeline of content for these big FR do you want them to build they got four Studios on Battlefield they now they should have a Sims 5 dude like it is like it is like criminal that they have not created a Sims that takes advantage of all the online [ __ ] that's going on right now like I it doesn't make sense like is Sims 4 not making enough revenue from its incredibly rabid

and long lived fan base that they're servicing for like a decade with that is that is exact the problem they don't want to they don't want to destroy their Cash Cow I get that right but that doesn't change the fact that they're not monetizing that game the way it could be monetized got it you know and that is like the future of the Sims right it's not taking old Tech that the Sims 4 is based upon and then [ __ ] locking on a ugc platform I mean how how does that make sense you know it's like the guy's brilliant guy I I don't I've heard nothing but good things about him right he's like a nice guy someone you gonna do he's like one of those EA though like if he's if he likes you then you're all good but the minute that he doesn't need you he's a perfect the ex absolutely perfect the ex right fine like I get it he's a he's he's where he should be but but you should not be up there presenting about game development that's is what that's all I'm saying that's a lot lot of projection a lot of projection so so not

I haven't watched this but it kind of listening to you like I like I understand what what Eric is saying because there is a core competence a core value a core service that EA delivers and that isn't apps it's not you know AI tools it's not ugc it's it's their key franchises that that they are not maybe delivering against all of them as well as they need to I mean Battlefield is not quite where it used to be there's no new Sims etc etc like I understand the the outrage from from from Mr Crest that um they're kind of talking about these things that apps like everybody knows about apps now they're kind of like almost bringing it closer to DraftKings and and through that almost like steering away the attention from the fact that they are not growing their key franchises they're not bringing the audience there that they're doing something that everybody else like they're part of this AI growth that's feels in ingenuous and that's the problem but at the same time if you're

working at EA and you have to show something exciting for the market and you're trying to you know you're picking your finger seeing where the where the wind blows you're like AI we need to be on AI we need to be on apps we need to be on ugc so of course they're going to talk about it and then they bring the person who probably it was his idea to to bring this forward and they give him the stage and and we'll see what's going to happen I'd also argue though that Mobile's been on his watch right for the last four years partly you know do this the worst acquisition in video game history right with glue we could say that it's not necessarily worst acquisition it could be worst postacquisition integration in the history no it was the dumbest besides Zinga it was the dumbest acquisition the worst timing possible for an acquisition and anybody in the industry could have told you not to do that deal at that time and I've talked to like numerous people that were looking at that deal and would never [ __ ] have done it at that time but EA did it I'll just add to that that it was also one of the worst post acquisition integration

then because yes but that's on his watch that is definitely that is definitely on his watch guys Ju Just Like Kate Blanchett participating in the Borderlands movie this was covid fever you know glue acquisition Co fever you know people stuck in doors they have to acquire billion companies to happen never let's not re rehash that let's move on let's move on to the positive like Kumbaya 300 episodes deconstructor of fun and everyone's everyone's joy joy joy to kick us off Mishka can we do a little bit of Story Time twig origin you know you started this whole thing what's the story oh we we can do the story I wanted to like just say one thing about this is regarding the twig and and and Chris this is something we talked about with with Chris I think last week I'm now sadly like doing a lot of events sadly because there's too many backtack and people come to me and they say like this one thing this is the most one of the most common things like yes Jen is awesome that's what I hear a lot and

then the second thing is Eric is really nice in real life so I I told him about this and he and Eric like you have to understand like I think Eric plays a character now I don't think I know because in real life the other how many hundred hours a week he's not this twig Crest he's a very nice person and that's the only thing that I hear and that's why it's so funny I'm sorry to blow up your stick but that's it's like one of the things behind the scenes is that that crus is super nice and when people meet him you they kind of like he's not the person on The Twig at all but this is his Outlet so that's the the secret behind the scenes all lies all lies and regarding this secret I have to tell this because we were talking about glue and I just remembered this funny story so this is regarding like if this is a story time one of our mutual friend was uh was sailing with the former CEO of glue you know the this is post sale the person is

you know he's finished the game he won he's sailing in the Bay of San Francisco with a mutual friend of ours and I remember how the conversation led to it like by one thing or another this mutual friend is also a friend of Crest and then somehow he mentions like the podcast or maybe do or whatever and this person like Nick at that point hasn't been working in games for maybe a year or two or three like he's he's well forgotten and he's re enjoying his life and then he was like oh yeah [ __ ] that Crest like like every time the twig would cover glue like the whole mood in the company would would basically change and he he was still feeling this like years past after he sailed to the sunset literally he was still butt hurt by the uh by the comments and I feel like this is funny but also it creates this thing where it's not punching down this is as punching up as you can can have because

it's it's fun you know to criticize you know constructively or or less constructive like most successful people in our industry that's you know it's it's not bad you know they can cry about it on their sailboats that's right all the way to the bank all right well so um I did a little bit of homework and Twig number one was on July 17th of 2018 and it sounds sounds like the first like 12 of them were just JK and you Mishka and then trust joins in at number 12 on October 10th 2018 so maybe can you do the like how did the Pod start I'll tell the origin story because I was the ACT origin of this podcast so what happened was JK and I met a while back par partially because of Mishka I think and we had a few dinners he reached out to me randomly said hey we should do a podcast together I think we'd be really we'd be really good at doing it and I totally ghosted him I didn't even

respond and it wasn't I wasn't even that busy it was a combination of like I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it and then also like I didn't really know how to respond and I was a huge fan of podcast I've been listening to podcast my whole career so I really I think I did want to do it deep down but anyway I didn't respond and so he ended up going off and finding Mishka and deconstructor of fun and doing it with Mishka and so they launched the podcast and I listened for the first like 10 episod or something like this and I'm like this is [ __ ] terrible right horrific right and I was off on I I called Joseph I like dude dude this [ __ ] is really really bad dude you gotta get me on there I it can't be any worse right it can't be any worse so let me on and let me and then I join on on 12 that's how I remember the story I I can add a couple of details to that story so the podcast started already in like 2016 that was the first one so it was like later published on anchor the first sort of a supporter of

the podcast was actually har man and who was the General partner and founding partner of play Ventures because I moved to Finland and I already had the podcast and I was doing only interviews there was no twig and back at that time we met for lunch and so forth and he was like let me just pay for the studio and everything just out of like nothing and you can just interview people and have them on and like back then we had Anil Des Gupta and so forth so that was like the first series and then JK I got him to come in at roio con which we talked about just before this thing so he was he was working at NBC so JK Joseph Kim uh and he came in to give a Talk At roio Con and I knew him a little bit from before and we kind of hang out it was fun and he did the podcast in that studio that that hard had funded and after that we were having lunch with him and his wife and I was like we should do like a weekly thing because like these interviews are really difficult you have to go to the studio you have to prepare you got to get the approval all that that stuff and we should do something like super simple which is like let's

just talk about news because we read the news and we talk about the news so let's just record that and that was like the idea of a simple repeatable content that kind of keeps the podcast going between these interviews that were kind of hard to build and so forth and of course like everything is supercharged by the people our first episodes were horrendous like I don't even understand like I applaud people and then feel ashamed and sorry for for for people listening to that garbage I I actually went back and I was I was trying to listen to some of them oh my god let's just say that I got like a few minutes in and I was like oh but Cris like I particularly wanted to hear what you were like on your first podcast it was really fascinating it was about who should buy Zinga it was pretty funny no one said take two in any of that you guys were like it's e or Ubisoft and one of them but it wasn't grumpy old man Chris it was I'm presenting Chris so it was interesting to hear like your off air side of you on air I was like oh wow

there's no there's no fun in that there's no fun he wasn't born yet heel was not born yet that that is that is true and I I do remember very specifically I mean I think the first 50 or 75 episodes the quality level was so [ __ ] low and anybody who does or wants to start a podcast like that is absolutely critical it's like you gota you got to get the quality you got to get the mics you got to get the right recording equipment and we really really struggled with that first I don't know I don't even know if it went up to 100 episodes but I think we got it kind of locked down now yeah and and then the second part that that is really important like by no means this is a place for where I or somebody else is like telling how to run podcast it's not it's not by but I would just say this like the the whole thing Jen when you said you listen to Crest in the beginning and he was a smart Crest he was a work Crest like the the crest outside this one hour of twig so that Crest did not resonate as well and the topics did not resonate as well and it's crazy that that you kind

of have to be a little bit divisive to kind of you know get people to tune in and so that's always been the double-edged short of being on this podcast because there is a certain element of [ __ ] talking if you will punching up if you will like even when we're talking about startups yeah it's a startup that raised 86 million we are allowed to you know it's it's not like your mom and pop who rais like you know half a million or struggling like these are successful excellent developers anyway so so that is the kind of a part that is kind of like the double-edged sword of this so-called media is you kind of have to press some buttons to be heard yeah so at the USC thing on Monday Ed made the class listen to some podcasts and and actually many of them were watching the YouTube was pretty funny and and so I asked them like what's your feedback what do you like and they're like we like when you guys fight and I was like okay that makes sense and and number two was they said that they like all of the

different perspectives that each of us bring across the different disciplines and how we go about disagreeing and resolving uh was really interesting to people so yes I agree like having a little conflict isn't a bad thing because it's what happens in real life right like when we're in these work meetings yeah conflict draws people okay let me do a little bit of podcast by the numbers and take a look at how we've done after all this time so 2 million alltime plays 40% of people listen on Apple podcast 2 million this I believe makes us the biggest games industry podcast around as far as I don't think so no it's like the biggest game industry podcasts are those who are connecting with consumers and clearly our our podcast doesn't game industry Insider sorry in terms of what our niches which is games industry people talk biggest fish and the smallest pond maybe yeah that's where I'm comfortable well okay then in that sense but in

terms of game industry podcast like game industry podcasts are really big like when we're talking about like people who make podcasts about wow and and some other top titles yeah B Toc those are I'm talking B2B in the world of B2B yeah game industry yeah I I don't know maybe I who who cares what other ones are there game industry. Biz they're kind of combination most Publications Y correct SC the two and a half gam two and yeah there's actually aot yeah economus cast Titan in the industry Sophie's podcast it's the best game economy podcast in the world number one number one I'm gonna come for you pH I'm gonna start arrival just for fun no Economist allowed game economy podcast be amazing so I also took a look at how people are listening 30% listen when walking the dog 30% at the gym and 40% on the toilet

so the top six countries 37% us UK 9% Canada 6% who we all pissed off a few episodes ago when we ripped on Tim Hortons and Adam is now representing for Canada so I'm sure that number's going up Finland 5% Mishka has HomeField Advantage Germany four Sweden four because they all want to hear how Philip's cats are doing because they can see him from the window per capita adjustment number oneish okay that's some game Economist math [ __ ] right there yes um and so demographically uh this is only the Spotify users you know 8020 male to female no surprise there 7% no specified or non-binary which was kind of interesting mostly a little bit 30 and up is our audience you know Mishka we need to craft a strategy to get those gen zers the next generation of gamers they don't work I remember when like it was really great to have you on and and

Laura on and there was like a concerted effort at least from my part to get female voices on the podcast and that also came in from the same source that the name twig actually came and that source is my wife so she came up actually with the name of the show but also the whole like female voice I I didn't particularly think about it but then I I was listening to this [ __ ] podcast about finances and economics and so so forth as as clearly by my delusional stuff that I talk about but one of them was like me trying to get her to listen to this like really interesting episode on on this Finance podcast and she was like I'm not about to listen two dudes talk about money and then like a light bulb went up my head because I was like thinking like how don't we get female listeners like what's going on and then it was uh it was pretty clear that we're two two male dominant on on this front so it's been absolutely great not only to have your voices and your your expertise but I think it's incredibly important for any

podcast to have you know male and female yeah diversification yeah and I think that's what's great and I credit Ethan a lot when seert was leaving and the marketing chair was open you know Ethan was kind of like lead recruiter for that you know hopefully Moneyball he's got some stats in the background but I know that you specifically were targeting females in the game industry and I really really appreciated that yeah because C was leaving I knew that I was going to have to dial back my time and I thought it was a great opportunity to even the odds appeal to a wider audience and I I don't know just uh if you don't do it intentionally it's not going to happen right isn't that part of the Dei allyship mental framework right so you have to make a conscious Choice and then make it happen and we had a lot of great voices that tried out and were interested and no shade on the other people who came on and guessed it for a couple weeks but Jen was a great fit yeah from the jump kind of like Phil yeah to be clear here you know I think

Jen has been an amazing addition for the podcast regardless of her gender okay because exactly factly she's really good at what she does she's OG she's done both console and PC and mobile experience like she's not afraid to express her opinions which is like the hardest thing to do and she has integrity and most importantly she gets [ __ ] done right so she's like she's like the Taskmaster right she's like something we need because we're all a bunch of [ __ ] NES I actually feel not part of that anyway she's really good at what she does and it's not because of her gender just to be clear I think that's a great point to make kind of in the framework of recruiting because there was no lowering of standards in fact if you compare Jen to me I'd say a raising of Standards right but it's more without a doubt that's it's understatement of the [ __ ] planet right that's understatement of the podcast right there you raise your standards and you make a conscious choice and for me whose network is primarily male it has to be a conscious

choice in order to overcome the inherent bias of me only dming people I know right yeah well thank you very much for the kind words and thank you Ethan for making the conscious choice I do think um your voice I I miss what you bring because you bring this historical perspective of games and correct me every time I get some like 20-year-old story wrong about a game I played you're like actually the real origin for that so uh please don't discount yourself and but he's actually the only game developer on the podcast really I mean when it comes down to it right like he's actually making games like sorry Misha but like no I've stepped down I got I got what 14 15 years in I'm only helping like I'm only Consulting I'm not in the trenches I'm outside the trenches long far away in the bunker yeah we're just screaming from the cheap seats you know up here thank you I'm going after Warren

spectre's record you know he's not retired yet but whenever he retires I want to beat him in terms of number of years in the trenches do it you got this 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 streamline Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success this podcast is brought to you by appsflyer 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 attribution 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 app sler where your app's potential meets performance all right so let's shift gears a little bit to the top 10 things we got right oh not everyone all at once calm down calm down the list is really short because it's wow are we looking at the same document there's like a novel here I know I know there there's a lot to get through but um I actually I asked the community what they wanted to hear from us because one of the comments was that we [ __ ] on anything new you know we often have a little bit of a negative perspective so what did we talk about that we got right who wants to go first first of all

Google stadia the dumbest idea in video games Apple arcade the second dumbest idea in video games mobas the worst genre from Mobile in the game industry embracer calling out the Ponzi scheme that is embracer some people were just so on the hook on this thing and like ultimately it didn't make sense and still front is on this list as well glue mobile another great call they ultimately got acquired for an insane amount of money by an insane company that doesn't know how to how to uh retain talent to save their lives that was a disaster idfa we were right about idfa I I I I look it had a huge impact on the industry for two [ __ ] years it destroyed the industry Apple destroyed their own industry and people like mate were out there basically saying oh well we'll be fine we'll figure it out right yeah two years later we're figuring it out right but no ultimately idfa completely changed the landscape on gaming and had made all the Publishers adjust and [ __ ] Apple doesn't give a

[ __ ] about us at all right Microsoft while I was ultimately wrong about the transaction closing we were right collectively about the fact that they are up shits Creek right now with their failed strategy for subscriptions and they're you know com reverting back and they're in big trouble right now because they're losing the generations self- admitted so anyway I thought we were right about the commentary around that but not ultimately right about that so that's all I got do you ever believe in anything you know everything is like a negative forecast here have you have you ever believed in anything Jimmy Jim will score 20 points in today's basketball game is that how you form your forecasts no I actually I do believe in a lot of things I believe in the console will continue to be a huge industry for this space I believe that the big franchises like Battlefield Call of Duty and FIFA will still generate significant amount returns I believe that there are

certain genres in Mobile that actually work and there's many genres that don't you got to shoot some threes this is all layup stuff no I'll give an example of Crest being a Believer even before twig so we were at this event in battery in San Francisco you remember that Crest like long time ago I used to live in San Francisco I was some on some weird panel you were at the same event and then afterwards you wanted to talk about Zinga and I was working at Zinga and you were so bullish at Zinga was maybe like under two bucks like I was like this guy is on crack and he believed in Zinga and I was like I'm at Zinga I know what's going on in Zinga and you think this company is worth like multiple times what it is I was wrong he was right even though I was inside and he was outside so I believe in Frank D's Vision right grow through acquisition and buying companies that are actually making money in Mobile right that are actually making games that make money in Mobile I definitely believe in that so that's an example of just like you believing in

something even when people around you are like insiders are telling you like dude you're wrong it's like nope I'm right on this and you wrote it and the company sold at 12 like it was plus 6X from the point when you said you believe in it and I was like you're insane since cr's list of top 10 was only seven I wanted to add a couple others I'm gonna give you two more wins and then I'm gonna give myself one win to pump my bag so I'm going to give you the win on crypto right your message on crypto was unwavering and correct what was that message Ethan just to clarify Mr tokenomics I think uh he might have said scam he might have said crypto is a scam for no users something along those lines totally correct CR I think you also called skills and every gaming spack that I invested in being a complete disaster correctly the skills call was really good actually that was yeah that in the Cyber punk I forgot the Cyber Punk thing cyber Punk was like probably

my best short call of my career and since all of these are about predicting impending disasters I had one thing that came to mind of an impending success which was calling out Monster Hunter now uh which was the Niantic game in their post Pokemon go era most of their IPs we rightly said are just poor matches when they came up this was the one where we said this is a great match this IP makes sense and they just hit 225 million in their first year because the IP is a match the the IP and its fundamental fantasy is a match for location based gaming so we got that one right and we're Believers in a game we believed in one game no chis was always strong on on Match Factory when that launched it's one of when we get to Corrections it's one that because as a as a user I don't like time pressure games I was like and they hadn't built out the meta when we were evaluating it in soft launch but Crush you were like wait I think RPD is looking good so you were bullish on

Match Factory actually let's get into the top Corrections so here's things we got wrong I pulled a couple just in listening to you guys and people have always messaged me to be like Crush was wrong on the ABK Microsoft acquisition right I mean the fundamental call was the UK or the European Union would block it because it's too big and they're going against Tech and dragged on for quite a long time and more longer than anybody imagined even the guys at Goldman right but ultimately they caved right and that that was not expected I I just want to be clear that there's two parts to this one is that whether this deal closes and whether it's good for the industry and I think I'm being proven right as we speak that this is a really really really really bad deal for the industry as a whole right I will concede that I got it wrong that it would not close but I am not conceding that this is a really really terrible deal for the industry and it's almost at a point where they got to spin this

thing out before they destroy it right if they don't spin it out in a few years this thing is going to just be decimated a shadow of its former self that's what I wanted to say it's gonna be a shadow of its former self if they don't they don't spin it out quickly because we're already seeing evidence of that as well to get profitable they're just cutting cutting cutting and so anyway yeah but I will concede that I got that wrong I was you know the the UK Regulators basically caved staying on you for a second what was your other one app 11 oh yeah App 11 so I got this one wrong where I was hearing from many many sources and apple themselves is that they were going to block fingerprinting which would have been the death Nowell of user acquisition in the space and so that would mean that Apple 11 would just get continue to get crushed right but what happened was is that Apple backed off fingerprinting because they knew they would impact the ecosystem far greater than just the user acquisition and Facebook and App 11 I think and they are allowing fingerprinting and Adam at

App 11 is a [ __ ] gangster and he just doubled down tripled down quadruple down on fingerprinting and building out Max and and that's made the stock $120 today right so I was wrong from when it got down to $10 the stock all the way up to 30 so it tripled but then I I came on board that App 11 was going to rule the roost and the stock is now like 110 or something 120 Phil give me some of yours no boy Squad Busters is just a big fat owl all around this I was there too I was there on that one too that's I was even gonna make I was going to get one you Squad Busters tattoo be like that Microsoft guy who got the Xbox one uh you know the game the game had problems I thought the one thing it would be able to do would bring everyone to the yard with all the IP you know they they brought all the IP of the yard maybe they could bring all the players to the yard was supposed to be its strength it turns out it looks like it's one of its weaknesses is it did not reach histor down on the volume the game always had problems but I thought the IP would bring people I've

really adjusted my priors after Squad Busters on the strength of mobile first IP to really do anything significant it just feels like there's a lot of bodies there there are some winners like roio to its credit I think built an IP that was mobile first and has done something with it but it doesn't seem like the ceiling is that high and again lot of those planes have been shot I don't think the IP is the problem with that game my friends I think the game is the problem with the game I mean yeah it got very flimsy downloads at launch it was not able to sustain I mean in the last 30 days Heyday has done more downloads than Squad Busters because game because no one's playing that game any well okay well we can have a whole fight about we we should do an episode on going back and looking at Squad Busters marketing and product because I I think there's a lot there I have to say like for me what what I jumped in on this bandwagon with Phil was yeah the game felt good in the beginning problems at ET but I'm very impressed by the talent that supercell has working there you know super good

people and when they are skipping soft launch I was like they must see some monster numbers like they must be looking at numbers they've never seen before and so that was m and now I'm like I'm like I'm worried of like how do they even make a call like this like now it even sounds crazier so now I'm like skeptical about about supercell decisions after having this call all wrong so so that was uh that was why I jumped on this so yeah the other big fat L is farlight 84 I really thought this thing was going to have some legs I mean this thing was rumored forever Shooters on mobile Joseph Kim was studying this game I remember uh lith is fantastic studio how did it go so wrong with that game and I mean I think really when you start to look at it you could start to see oh man mobile Shooters maybe aren't the genre that we thought it wash I'm throwing one into the mix I've got two for my myself and and one I'm I'm kind of throwing on you guys you know you know from my DMs that uh uh

since I am mostly not on the podcast I feel like anime and gacha games don't get their due I'm trying to and I remember the week honai star rail came out you guys like didn't cover it or didn't even talk about or maybe like brought it up and we're like what what is this game even and then it did a hundred million in its first month and and has clearly made you know joined the billion dollar club and so I just want to say like kind of missing the boat on honai Star Rail and uh I would like to see more anime and gotta game coverage um overall and then my two massive massive uh uh L's and I wouldn't even be here without them which is funny one obviously I came in as the crypto kid and I believe two things about crypto that to date I have gotten completely and totally wrong and they were fundamental to why I believed in it for about two years so one thing I believed was that the freet toplay whales that I have spent my career servicing you know fulfilling their

needs through gameplay and giving them hundreds of millions of dollars of things to buy I thought that crypto was going to solve an unfulfilled need for them that they were spending all this money on things they don't own turns out they don't care ownership was not a value ad for them and the second thing that I believed I know plenty of our listeners are still working on crypto and so maybe this will be true in 10 years but to date crypto has not gotten any easier for normies to use I sold like my last couple nfts a couple weeks ago or months ago and I was like man [ __ ] covid fever this [ __ ] makes no sense like what am I even doing here why am I putting in all this work to try and get $50 out of a system that is just like trying to steal from me and and and confuse like why did I think this would replace banking that convenient easy to use thing where I can go to a machine on the corner of any Street and get money out and trust it like I thought it would

get easier over time to date I have not personally encountered a single use of crypto that was easier than it was in I don't know whenever I started talking crypto so two massive losses thank you for letting me continue to comment on the industry despite the whole premise of why I'm here being tokenomics episode was like one of the most listened to podcasts of all time oh yeah is it's still number two isn't it I still have the do I have the number one or number two most listen you have the number two but overall like it's number one because of the YouTube traffic it was uh it was I think it was crypto for dummies or token like what yeah Power of marketing dude you gave that the perfect title blockchain gaming for dummies [ __ ] Blain gaming for dummies that's true that's true it's a clickbait number one so right title right what do you end up thinking of b bananas on Steam we we haven't gotten your take on this since it's emerged I actually did not pay enough attention to bananas he's allergic to crypto right now so let's

just not talk about it he's going to get a r like I I thought crypto wasn't allowed on Steam so I don't know what the crypto integration is I can't comment i' have to research you're uh absent from this list of Corrections is it because there's too many and you couldn't pick one uh no I mean I I I get stuff constantly wrong like the one that I remember right now is definitely Squad Busters what else would would be like that type of a big thing Donna Titans marks the end of natural motion that was an historic DF article remember that to be taken down oh that was incredible oh that went around at scopely I remember every everyone was talking about that slack groups were breaking out oh my God [ __ ] yeah like back in the days I was uh I was much more wild that was like a wild Crest maybe when I get like a little bit more experience I'll go Crest mode like on my last five years in the industry then I also open up but um yeah that was

a that was a that was a hot piece for sure back in the days there's a lot of things that I regret let's put it this way there's a lot of things that I regret I wish that I wouldn't talk so much about economics I need to stop listening and reading [ __ ] Economist Financial Times Bloomberg and all these but then Google algorithm just pushes every evening as I go to bed worry we'll get you some prot what and so get like I get like Bamboozled to these like macroeconomic stuff and I can't stop and then Crest yells at me and I'm like trying to be like you got to get rid of this [ __ ] [ __ ] so that I regret I regret talking so much about macroeconomics and I know the problem and I blame Google's algorithm for it so someone at play Ventures said we should call it Michigan omics should be a new section yeah it's like dude you got you got to get Mishka sto talking about this [ __ ] dude fully agree I fully agree 100% regret

and um I'm trying to get out so now my feet now by the way now my feed is like more and more about running shoes because I like looked at a couple of things and I bought some and now Google is just killing me like ask me about the latest Brooks or aex or saky model and I will know it because every evening they're like you going to bed boy let me tell you about these new [ __ ] shoes that Brooks just released like what the [ __ ] I got all of them so gladly that doesn't intersect with t let's move on from the Sak shoes this is this is a newbie Corner part uh what do your surprised you the most about coming on to the podcast I'll be a little bit quick because we covered some of this so I'm actually still the rookie thank you for not hazing me I guess I joined in twig 230 in May of 20123 so like a year and a half ago we told the story about again Ethan thank you oh my my God but what was really funny let me just give you a little behind the scenes on how the Pod comes together which is Ethan's

like Jen it's kind of like a bunch of drunk college folks who just happen to get on a pod and start talking about stuff so there actually is kind of a script we have this like Dropbox paper I was like what's Dropbox paper so it's the way that we kind of organize everything there is no meeting there's no pre-meeting everything is done asynchronously and so it's hey go out find a news topic that you think you want to talk about put it in this document write your take and then other people are going to go in async and kind of like write what they're going to say and then sometimes so we actually do script out each one of the twigs and we put a little bit of organization to it and then we Riff on things especially when each other says something crazy but uh what surprised me I think was I was expecting to have a like a lot of challenges like arguing with Crest cuz crest often hates on marketing and when I got on CR actually reached out to me

offline he's like hey let's do a chat and a catch up you are so ungodly nice and smart and welcoming St and I was shocked I was shocked I love I love hanging out with you me yeah that was like pretty surprising to me to be honest um so Laura isn't here but her quick story was I guess you guys ran into her at do this annual Istanbul Google deconstructor fund think games Istanbul Summit and she just invited herself on the podcast and she just joined is that was that the story no no no no no no no I I I talked to her she was really like kind of a little bit sarcastic and piy and like I thought and she kind of knew gaming and she knews product and I'm like oh this is perfect like she'd be great on the podcast and so that so we invited her on and she she invited herself to the the uh the G the Istanbul event dinner right she was not even part of the crew and she totally like finagled her way and uh well she

didn't she Laura is really nice we you know I was there I think Maya hrey some some other ones we like come on like cuz she was at the same hotel with us and we were all going to this post event dinner which which was you know pretty big I think she wasn't invited to she wasn't invited but we smuggled her in we're like no no no you just come in and just walk in and just take a seat she was like no no it's like no no no you just walk in and and behave like you belong here and so she sat next to Crest and that was it oh that's amazing I love it Phil yeah I don't think I got your story I think Eric well first of all it's real to be on this cast I remember at scopely everyone everyone was gabbing about the latest twig it was always like an undertone in meetings about what the hosts said last week what they got wrong um for my Survival Story I followed Eric cord on Twitter and I think he had posted he was leaving or they were looking for hosts and uh I sent him a DM and we had had some friendly DM ex changes beforehand and he's like all right and then I had to have an interview with Eric Crest and I was like

oh this will be interesting and I was like all right what can I disagree with him about because I knew I knew you could get him going a little bit if you could see combat with him and survive some bullets you might have a shot of surviving the war and so I like I forget what we disagreed about on the when we talked to each other it was like the dirtiness of uh of of oh loot boxes predatory loot boxes predatory loot box I was getting an ethical defense of loot boxes I still love to do that too you backed away from that debate I've been wearing a go for like three years on that I'm so steadfast in my opinion on this it's becoming more and more apparent every time I do a presentation on it so yeah maybe we should have the debate that was a ton of fun and then from there um I was Off to the Races but like like Eric I've grown up listening to podcasts like games for Windows you remember that crew Sean Elliot I mean that was that was an amazing crew with the comedy button end up getting spun off of this was an econ talk like they've been a really important part of my life and it's been surreal to to to be on one they are everything that you imagine

them to be it's like this weird talk show that you're on that's kind of in your living room but there's also like behind the curtain thousands of people that are listening and sometimes you might forget that they exist but they will rear their head when you did something wrong um or or you talk about something and you don't understand it like they do and so you you end up getting a lot of factual Corrections or you miss this or you didn't cover this right the other thing you'll get DMS about is like a dirty laundry sometimes about like you know there's all the drama with this person and that person and they go way back and you end up learning a lot you shouldn't learn about the games industry the the best part that U about being on the show is that like you have to form a model of games how the game industry works you have to consume all this news and really update your prior understanding of the world like Squad Busters failed what are you going to take away from that we were just talking about Spectre divide you know enoy we're looking at the Sim seems to be doing well Battlefield isn't doing well Call of Duty is doing well so like you have to take all these different pieces of information assess the strength of the evidence and then kind of update your model going forward and hopefully like be a better analyst and that isn't something that is something

you can do out of the box you might think you might be able to do that out of the box but every week remember you got to go on you got to talk about it so you can't just keep it in your head you actually have to write it down you have to think about it and if you don't someone else one of these other clothes is Gonna Eat You Alive if you don't if you don't come if you come unarmed uh you're not going to survive the encounter so I think you got to do your homework yeah I want to second that I mean part of the reason I actually do the podcast is to stay on top of what's actually happening on a real-time basis and actually trying to think about it and then also getting people's opinion like if I don't really understand something like why this douchebag Chief strategy officer is out there talking about AI I called someone and said hey what the [ __ ] why is this guy up there talking about AI he's like I have no [ __ ] idea why this guy is talking about AI this doesn't make any sense it's like it's like keeping that dialogue going with all these different contacts and kind of keeping fresh about what's happening on the industry is really help for me to do the analyst stuff for the investors in particular so

yeah agree what was so funny to me about reading uh Phil's surprise about the dirty laundry and the number of DMS he gets I get no DMS because my takes are [ __ ] great just got to roll around the mud more yeah or or you know great or people don't listen to them yeah you need to you need to R I think I come historical and I take less critical stances I don't stick my neck out as much so don't get uh as many dmss but I do love teasing Phil I do miss it and you know it comes from place my friend so the thing that surprised me most about joining twig is actually not about twig but about the the year or so I spent when Mishka was off mic doing where I was doing both tokenomics and running all the interviews I was amazed flabbergasted even by how bad your PR people that you all hire in the listening audience are at pitching us to get on the pot that's true like seriously and I'm sorry if

you're listening and you've pitched me before and didn't get out like they're really bad at pitching for coverage a lot of them a lot of them treat it like a volume business which obviously it is their tone nothing ruins my day more than getting an email from someone I've never met treating me like I work for them right that's what I hate is like when there's this tone of entitlement about why they're client that hired them absolutely deserves to be on my podcast and get access to my audience like that's just weird a lot of them show absolutely no knowledge of who the audience is or why they would be interested in the guest they pitch credentials they don't pitch story and it's like look I can't just because someone is X Y or Z doesn't mean they have a story to tell that is worth an hour of my time let alone the community's time and the last one is like when you push back on PR and be like hey this isn't a story pitch me a story ghosted like they just go right they're just checking a box by emailing

every Creator it feels like so I wanted to bring that up as my surprise because if you are hiring a PR person whose job it is is to get you coverage on websites and podcasts and videos and you find that they are not successful perhaps audit their Communications have them pitch you as they would pitch a Creator and find out if they have the goods because Mishka I don't know if this is your experience but like 95% instant trash B I'll just say let's since we're like throwing shade I'll name one good one that that just came out of mind they they're many good ones but let's say Alfred London that's pretty good one for a PR agency so if you're working with them they've pitched us good guests I think Sean ruin the the co-o of PCH was the last one but good guests from that one they understand the audience good interaction good back and forth Alfred London I'll recommend them if you're trying to get on different podcast so that's one and 47 communication is also pretty good not pretty good they're good good com service that's that that's a

us-based one oh yeah all right so let's do quickly some biggest stories since twig 200 so maybe a couple years ago um I wanted to talk about the unity Unity runtime fee Fiasco because it's really come full circle so this was a really memorable time for me you know you know Phil you talked about having to consume we have to consume so much information right we have to read everything here is the first time that I felt like I was press it it's funny because sometimes now when I call my friends they're like Jen is this off the Record and I I'm like wait oh you think I'm press so it's so being a marketer and a in a PR and a coms person pitching all these things and now kind of in this side of my job being on the other side of that and so people have been reaching out like hey let me give you off the Record information because I want you to talk about this on the podcast and then you know news was breaking like during the podcast and we had to figure out how to

talk about the unity thing and how to explain all of the different fees I built a calculator and so a year later and probably two CEOs later uh they decided to cancel the runtime fee and basically charge the rich right and increase the fee for the bigger companies but Mishka don't you have an interview coming up with unity like the CMO or something like well I'm at a Unity event on the new CEO was here and and so forth so I'm right here I just talked to the the CMO as well about the other on time fee apparently they were a little bit of a worried how the people are going to take it I was like that's a good news they're gonna take it well so yes currently at Unity event hey actually I will say that I might be of wrong about Bromberg right like maybe he is exactly what they need right now because he's doing exactly what he should do at this point my thing was that they need someone more touchy feely and more like you know Kumbaya bring people together but no like he basically just eliminated the [ __ ] runtime fee which is the problem to begin with and

then he's out there trying to fix the [ __ ] with the adtec stuff and so basically what he's saying is he's conceding that this [ __ ] engine business is [ __ ] it's never gonna be profitable it is what it is they'll Double Down focus and try to make it as profitable as possible but they all their focus is on adtech and he's busting heads and evidently it's it's coming together you know and and I think Unity is going to do really well next year so there's my positive spin Mr Phillip oh I love it I love it I I'll I'll comp I'll support Eric's Point here again haven't you know this I do this Unity event almost every year and the last time we were doing this I remember clearly I was sitting next to suur we're at the same event and rickell was presenting at this event and he did a presentation about metaverse and it was kind of like interesting um you know let's put it that way uh however you can talk about metaverse but I remember clearly this after the presentation ended he ran away like somebody was holding his kids hostage he had to go go

like he ran away from the stage and then today Matt Bromberg was giving the opening speech at this event here and um the whole approach was very different it was more about like you are our key partner so this is a little bit of a smaller event a lot of a lot of top studios are here is like you're a key Partners want to listen to you Etc and he stayed here interacting with the key clients the people the people people the clients the companies that pay the bill they're all here listening to what they need and so forth so that's at least the change you can see already happening of course Unity back at that time was a 200 bucks a stock and there's a rush to close a lot of deals and expand the metaverse and today it's more about unities chasing profitability it's a whole different ball game and a different CEO for that and um at least my first take is a very positive and you know bullish in that sense all right Phil what's your story it's got to be a monopoly go I just I mean it's first of all it's one of the things we got right or at least at least I got right on that one I took a swing

on that one I got it you know what you're making me realize massive L for me I said there was no way they would overtake coin Busters and I was WR that's a safe bet though honestly like no one would have imagined that it would has gotten as big as that I said that just to be clear I said that just to be clear it right I said it would would best coin Master without little hesitation and I I think just how much money this game has made in such a short period of time it's almost just gone over people's heads I mean it it completely changes almost every analysis you do it repaints social Cino Social Casino looks like a down arrow it's an up Arrow now which breaks so many narratives about this shift the shift to the middle see that's see that's the wrong that is the wrong takeaway Phil that really is the wrong takeaway because you talk to anybody in Social Casino land they're not [ __ ] dancing on ceilings or whatever the expression is you know based upon Monopoly goes performance dude they're in the [ __ ] right now dude plka is like an all-time [ __ ] low they're trading it like five times earnings dude it's like that's

your takeaway that's not the takeaway I take from that I'm saying it is a social casino game and it's done well it's not a social casino game see this is your problem is like you define it as a as a social casino game you're going to lead people to the wrong trough dude that's not the right thing it's a casual game that has Social Casino elements and if you want to build that sure if you want to build a [ __ ] slots game or a poker game or a bingo game you're an idiot you don't do that in this market you roll dice that's a big go button it could not be a closer icon of a of a slots game and it's also the most predatory monetization game out there right ex I mean to your own Point who he said it your point though like if if you consider that type of monetization predatory yeah it completely fits the bill but regardless of how we classify it Social Casino or not it's made a [ __ ] ton of money like a Gob smacking amount of money in a very short period of time and I I don't know if the waves the Wake yet has really reached everyone you know where are the fast follows where are the changes in genre approach you know you

look at a game on HD that does really really well there'll be like a million fast Falls and we were just talking about Spectre divide which is now the third entry to Tactical Shooters Beyond valerant in a major way like where the ones that are going to go after Monopoly go what does Monopoly go mean yet and I don't know if we've really absorbed that yet I think you and I are actually talking saying the same thing but we're just I'm just being a dick but like at the end of the day the Casual gameplay deep monetization design seems to be the formula that it's winning and Monopoly go is an perfect example of that where they took a casino Style game and they made it super casual and fun and engaging for a mass Market audience and as deep predatory monetization practices and it's [ __ ] a perfect game for mobile now see that's an interesting analysis right that's saying that Monopoly go basically casualized Social Casino now that I would concur with I think that that is I think that's what we both are saying the same thing I'm justy I think you are but what what else does it mean though I think like that's the other piece right so okay it casualized slots you know what what does

that mean though what what other takeaways can we take away from that if if there was this bajillion you know hundred billion dollar bill on the ground that scopely picked up what else is lying around Monopoly is an old brand it's a very familyfriendly brand it's a brand can I do my gen voice everyone thans Monopoly was made in their country did you did know that did you know people would love that fact Phil it has 99 to 100% brand awareness a higher brand awareness Santa Claus that fact has like a crazy net promoter score I'll say that but but think about this so so you have this sort of a no not sort of a you have this truly like iconic brand and most of the companies like you mentioned like you take anything from Lego to Sonic to whatever you want to talk about they would be probably totally against a game with what Crest called predatory monetization like this

type of a game which is so aggressive and yet this iconic brand when full end allowed the game team to build the type of game that finds Market success and is reaping all the success meanwhile you go to any of these companies that own these big IPS they will dictate to you what can you do and what you can't are you going to use gacha well the gacha is not okay is there ad monetization well godamn no is there one bad review from any country that we can read in the comment section if there is we're going to [ __ ] throw a [ __ ] storm your way like that's how most of the brands interact but it seems like Hasbro through their long relationship with scopely is so successful also because they are able to trust their Partners to do the right decisions for this particular medium and I think that's one of the key takeaways from from this success case that is actually super insightful right so this is exactly why roio roio and Sega have failed miserably over and over and over and over again because they will not Embrace monetization and that's why blizzard

continues to fail over and over and over again except for Diablo mortal which was made by the Chinese right so it's like yes let's do predatory mization you want to sued at mobile [ __ ] make games that make money right and that's the recipe right until you do that it's one of many many reasons um I think I've told the story before I mean I did the house where was in EA I was there for 5 years I had to go when I was on Scrabble on mobile we used to sell it for premium $6.99 I had to go and Pitch the CEO on taking it free to play and he literally was Brian goldner at the time literally looked at me in the face and is like are you [ __ ] kidding me you want to put Scrabble for free and we said hold on let me tell you about ad monetization and let me tell you about and we actually didn't even do microtransactions in the original Scrabble and they let us do it so to Hasbro's credit and and by the way there are Monopoly slot machines in Vegas for the last 10 or 15 years so it is true

with game brands that have been around for a long time if you're an IP holder and you have give flexibility to your partner that is key I also think there's a huge story around how they soft launched it and brought that game to Market that is a case study in Perfection of really understanding how do you launch a game in today's world with the right kpis in place like supercell on Squad Busters should be calling up Hasbro and scopely and being like please walk me through what you did because we didn't do that on Squad Busters and we messed up the moral of the story is that everyone has to be like Hasbro and embrace the horror that is free to play mobile definitely not what I said but you got this is goes to the trans media point that is a whole other Ted Talk which is you have to let the people who are experts in that either segment or that gen or that industry do what's right for the brand you know with their creative expertise and I think that's

why you get good trans media when it's good it's why you get good mobile games when they're I I know you're go okay we're saying the same thing in that if people who get their hands on a brand are allowed to do what they do best while still living within the guardrails of the brand that is what a key to success I think I agree with everything except the last part right [ __ ] guard rails of the goddamn brand like if you you want to be successful on a [ __ ] platform find the people that know how to use the do the platform embrace the horror and get it done right but if you're trying to like have some kind of like brand guidelines and stuff that you're never you're going to fail miserably over and over and over and over again so Ethan the the section is biggest story since episode 200 I think that the biggest story as it relates to our audience is the long-term effects of the end of Zer zero interest rate program and the end of lockdown and its combined effect on our industry and our employment situation and the funding for

our industry this is something sefort hit on a lot the end of Zer and and was one of my big takeaways as a listener and a host but it's just you know we had a extended and unprecedented period of time where what 0% interest rates from the US Central Bank on treasuries right and that sets The Benchmark for pretty much all interest rates for everything across the world uh when interest rates are super low when you can't make any meaningful Returns on just sitting on your money in a bank account it pushes institutional investors into riskier and riskier investment classes you know venture capital is one of those and we had a period of time where games industry was a very hot investment category for VCS crypto which overlaps with the games industry had was a very hot investment category so we had years of just remarkable groundbreaking amounts of investment into venture capital and that then filtered down into

a lot of the companies that we and our listeners work for or consult for I mean I'm on my seventh Venture back startup I've consulted for like 30 Venture back startups like most of the money that has gone to my bank account has been Venture investment at the end of the day and I think that's probably true for most people who listen who are primarily working in the mobile space and even you know console or PC there's a lot of venture investment that combined with lockdown creating record numbers of people indoor record number of people needing to distract their children just record amounts of Revenue inside of the game industry from this Global pandemic it was a silver lining for our industry at least so these two things happening kind of at the same time which is rising interest rates you know a managed a soft Landing of the economy to uh prevent a giant crash like in 2008 there's been less invest m in the games industry and less Revenue in the games industry and you combine these two forces and you're in the middle of this soft Landing that

we're in and looks like it'll persist for some number of months if not years which is Studios closing by probably the hundreds at this point people being laid off you know positions closing tens of thousands of layoffs over the past uh year and a half two years and we're not at the end of this right Microsoft just laid off 650 people last week there was another Studio closure last week like we're not done done folks like the video games industry has contracted and is continuing to contract and many of those job losses will never come back and many people who are getting laid off who have high skills and probably had inflated salaries during that period of enhanced investment are going to be taking pay cuts or going to be moving to fractional roles or Consulting roles because you have to recognize that the investment isn't what it was the revenues aren't what they were and that impacts how we are employed and how many of us can be employed so that I think is just the massive story for this industry Insider

podcast very true I think the Microsoft story is very complicated is part of the narrative for the last year or so and'll continue to be a theme that we talk about unfortunately because it's a very complicated story between big Tech and gaming there's lots of moving Parts between Microsoft corporate Xbox leadership and all the studio orgs including blizzard and Activision Etc they conceded the console Wars which has huge deep issues and potential problems with the existing structure of the whole [ __ ] console business I think the story will continue and will have impact on the industry long term they need to spin this thing out sooner rather than later um before M Microsoft kind of manages this thing in the ground so I think all the AI investment happened at the same time that AI took off and Microsoft probably only cares about AI at this point right like so no I know that is the big corporate problem like the gaming industry is no longer strategic for Microsoft so therefore there's no reason to have this huge

asset that's not making that much money for them correct right so this is this is going to be the biggest problem going forward yeah the multiples are so down on gaming compared to any almost any other one like we've seen multiples between 0.8 to one so that times revenue is your the valuation of the company so you kind of don't even want those assets kind of bringing down rest of the business which is SAS which is at a much higher multiples you think Sony increases prices then which they've already done I mean their biggest competitors is out why wouldn't you raise the price across the board of stuff $700 PS5 we G to cover that next week I just love the vitual hate about a high priced device for the core it's really funny all right yeah let's call it this was super fun story time was great we'll pick up story time next week and and finish a couple other things Ethan thank you for coming back and spending time with us I know you're super busy who fun yeah yeah this was a great mental break super busy and we did the longest episode

ever sorry about that e that's okay all right everyone see you next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode is 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 fun slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fun.com /s 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