TWIG #301 $1B Company Emerges From the Shadows

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hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games twig 301 I'm gonna call it 300.5 or 300 and a half because we're g to continue celebrating the 300 episode Milestone we also read into still all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to a lot of great news for us to chat through today also we are the only video game podcast that has two of the hosts who say Mario and the rest of us Shake our heads so um there you go so here's what we're talking about today Adam and Laura are here to do their twig histories uh some acquisition news at plka that we're kind of wanted to Deep dive into it's kind of exciting dream Haven has an announcement and rip to everdale again I guess it's died twice now I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at Jaden Inferno and bet hat today we have Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting let's cook Eric crest

CER Consulting Group yo and the two Mario fans Adam teler product extraordinaire 20 years making amazing amazing products and Shooters and HD things I just gonna elaborate because I'm not allowed to talk about where you work anymore or am I allowed no Laura Toranto Senor director or Toronto since we're all making fun of mispronunciations today City director of product Big Fish Games it's me Lou oh that's that's awesome all right Mr tord do you have a shill okay let's get into a shill so I'm supposed to shill for the blog M wrote a piece AI game industry in 2025 the unspoken part have you guys actually read the article yet not yet nobody's read it yet unre part right now okay well let's be real he wrote it with chat GPT

he didn't Splurge for 40 or for 01 let's just come on like oh um I read it and to be honest right from the beginning I was surprised because I scrolled down and basically his face covers like half the blog His image of his face is half the block and then I think he's just gone like fullblown cynical now in his retirement like the big quote from this is that AI will lead to a massive drop in quality of games in the short term which like comparing Crest to Misa this is like pretty cynical I think we should be start getting worried about Misa in his retirement now overall though like my take if you were to ask me about AI very impressive technology taking Leaps and Bounds of recycle it's leading to efficiencies in art programming and design and that efficiency right now is mostly focused on smaller visible areas so not playf facing things so things like documentation refactoring code uh working through compilation errors summarizing in documents it's your MBA

intern your PA programmer your personal concept artist right now and I think right now we're starting to see a higher impact where sort of procedurally generated content was already a thing so for example level design in Match 3 generating cosmetics in terms of patterns and textures but open question to you guys do you guys use a AI in your day-to-day because I'm I'm finding I'm going full-blown AI trying to add as much of it to my day-to-day as possible uh every day I'm I'm going to be doing some podcasts up coming with AI companies for uh a couple different things one is a really cool company from layer. who does art for your games and for your UA you can train your own model on your own assets and so you're like hey I want to I want this character in a plumber outfit with a big M on the hat and then it'll kind of do that for you there's also an amazing company that does UA optimization called replay. a

where it takes all of your UA figures out competitively what works the best and automatically Stitches the the new videos together and then the platform tests it for you and within a couple like 10 days gives you a winner and then runs like what you can do now with art and creative is is fantastic and then there was news that so this is like from the theatrical group Lionsgate did a deal with this company called Runway that does uh video Ai and even though the writers group got this whole AI deal you know Hollywood's going to go full Ai and train all of uh their video assets with a video model and then have it do storyboarding and all of these different things so if you're not in gaming and paying attention to this Lion's gate Runway deal you should absolutely be doing that like imagine you know put all the levels of Call of Duty you've ever played into a video and then have it run like compilations for you to storyboard you know like a new level design play I I don't know there's so much stuff all

right that was that was a lot CR you you what are we talking about i s you lost me ai ai ai all right right don't worry Chris we'll move on all right so um I actually have the craziest shill uh I'm gonna shill Phil because no stop it yeah no stop no we were we always fight party's just getting going we always fight and then I was like all right let's do a project together so we're working on this project and like he's a number Savant he's a guru he's like stop Swiss Army even I need to stop this [ __ ] I I throwing up in my mouth I was imp I was impressed I was impressed that I I had a chance to Wonder Twin it up with Stan at beta hat and now you know like he's you know fills the robin to my Batman or the Hawkeye to my black widow or whatever can we cut all this out no just put on Loop I'm making a soundboard all right all right thank you for the kind words Jen it goes It goes

both ways I've seen you tear it up it's been fun I I mean we we should unfill all the time I thought I'd say something nice about him all right C just this once just this once um Corrections uh the question here on the script is any corrections or apologies for the EA strategy attack last week and resounding absolutely no I got nothing but kudos for expressing the opinion that the strategy gu should not be talking about Ai and game development so I think four or five people from EA were like thank you thank you thank you now I want to make clear I there's nothing personal against this dude I don't know him I don't know anything really all about about him it's more about the idea that some McKenzie douche is up there talking about video game development after four years experience in gaming that's all it is it has nothing to do with this guy personally supposedly he's a cool dude so that's it that's all I got that's all I asked from you is to be able to at

least say like Mahir as a person is a good person in terms of the content that was presented you have real issues with it which I totally agree with you're too Canadian you're too nice yeah that is true generally speaking like it's like a disease Canadian yep well I feel personally attacked you went after Toronto so I had to oh true I forgot I forgot about that part right Toronto dude yep it's where all the [ __ ] McKenzie people retire right I Towers we'll chip away at you Chris right but these these EA people coming out and just emboldening you we we got to we got to soften you up a little bit one of my clients I talked to yesterday was like I was listening to this conference and I was laughing out loud knowing what your reaction was going to be she's like I could not help myself thinking about what you are gonna say about this guy talking at this conference because she was as outraged as I was and she's like a huge shareholder right it's like what the

[ __ ] all right so get me going why what were they thinking I mean it's like it's insane you know so whatever it was mean I admit it was mean yeah we also didn't mention that they spent I think a total of one minute on mobile in the entire presentation of course they did but you know it just goes to later on when we talk about Acquisitions and how other people are looking at mobile it's really interesting all right so let's get into the continuing the fun for the 300 celebration I actually got a lot of positive feedback from listeners who many of them are newer and didn't know a lot of the origin stories and so Adam and Laura since we didn't get a chance to hear from you on your stories and your way back machine would love to hear a little bit more Adam why don't you go first I was writing on deconstructor back in 2015 2016 like that's how it got kind of pulled into deconstructor as a community the weird story there is that actually I wrote a book back in like 2012 on mobile game design I I think it's still actually like available for

pre-order on Amazon if you look up my name wait did you publish it no no because I basically take money no I didn't it was a small book and basically the publisher pushed me to make it into like a textbook I didn't have time for that [ __ ] so we killed it and then I posted all the articles online those articles ended up getting a whole bunch of people talking about mobile game design and then that's when Mis was like Hey I want you to write for deconstruction inor which at the time like I was just a nobody so I was like sure why not write about some games but yeah you're one of the podcasts I was listening to Misa Crest and Joe I was a fan and asked to come on as a guest and actually JK drove over let me his mic and then after that first episode cres called me up and said that I was both smarter and more articulate than Misa so he wanted me to come on the podcast that was good poor M he's getting the

but that was true right do you remember that call because I remember that call dude that's not what you wrote that's not what you wrote there I was like I don't even understand what that meant but I know exactly what you're saying that's exactly what I said because I want I want a real response I don't you guys keep cheating and reading my my text I want a real response from Chris no that's exactly I want a real product guy yeah um yeah in terms of like the top correct calls and the top flops so like in general I think we look good you know throwing from the the cheap seats because we mostly say games will not succeed and the market has a very low hit rate I think one of the more correct calls we made was about web shops so I remember suert was actually pushing back to cres and I saying that web shops would not take a meaningful share from App Store and cres and I both push back on just do the nature of free-to-play in top Spenders also subscriptions I think that was like the thing we kept beating on every single Le twig way back in the

day we were skeptical of Game Pass really on day one wed three as well sorry Ethan but there is really there was with one episode and I sorry I forget who it was with we brought in a guest host and actually genuinely feel terrible because we just destroyed him on that podcast of like just the level of like what the [ __ ] are you talking about and how badly we barged him with doubt but besides that I think we spotted some design issues early in a bunch of games like Diablo Immortal and Warcraft Rumble top flops I have Scar Tissue here because when I do call it wrong I do really appreciate when people come up and say that I got it wrong and usually it twists my brain and like changes how I perceive the market so for example on COD mobile we had a bet uh in terms of like the year one Revenue the Cod mobile will actually release and the Cod mobile team told me that they took my number and they posted it on the wall and they said we're going to beat it so they quickly ramped up Cosmetics production and then they released in

China all within that year and they blew past that number right so that's a humble brag I'm sorry I'm sorry but that do you have a wanted poster somewhere throwing darts at you or like Effy no my quote's up there on the wall too evidently according to the Call of Duty guys something um besides that like I I did call Marvel snap wrong called brawl star wrong called Apex Legends wrong when it first launched and I think the worst one I got called I was bullish on Dr Mario on mobile and I sincerely apologize I can go back and go back to the recording but I was Bish on Dr Mary on mobble I'm sorry were you really yeah cuz I'm a Dr Maria fan like that was one of the parts that like scarred me of like no I have to match cr's cynicism otherwise I'm not going to look smart on this podcast oh my God my my wife is a huge Dr Mario fan Mario I'll say it Canadian on the OG Nintendo we had to buy like a TV with a tube in it because we were playing duck hunt with the the zapper anyway that's my connection to

your failure uh Laura what are your Mario stories my my Mario stories uh so I'll start with the history so the reason I started I got involved with the deconstructor fund was because of Adam Adam and I met in like 2013 when we were both working at wuga and then we became friends so I've known Adam my God 13 years now it's been a while and he was already part of do and hay pop had just launched and I was like oh I could write an article how hard could it be well Adam kindly offered to edit and it was a much more labor intensive process than I had expected for me and for poor Adam who had to edit and try to get me focused on all right remember how to write essays Laura you gotta you got to make a proper thesis you got to support that thesis at one point I think I wanted to throw my laptop against the wall and I was just like no I hate this is a terrible idea but then I finished finished it and that was the first one

and then even though it was hard I feel like I got a little craving for it so then I started writing more and more articles so I think my if I remember correctly my second one was the Royal match article and that's probably my most popular article I haven't checked I haven't actually looked at the numbers but that's the one that's gotten quoted back to me the most time so I'll be sitting this was probably a couple years ago and someone be like have you read this article on Royal match I'm like yes I wrote it thank you I appreciate it um so that's how I started and then I joined around the 200th episodes so I've been on about a 100ish here or there episodes and I started and I posted this um when we were kind of ramping up to this 300 celebration because I either had the great Misfortune or great Fortune of sitting next to Crest after crashing the do ismol dinner for the first big event I wasn't a speaker but I knew all the speakers I knew most of most of y'all that were there and I was

talking to Mishka and he's like it's fine I know everyone here I helped work and I can get you come to dinner it's totally okay I'm like Misha wasn't invited I I feel like that's that's very it's very rude and inappropriate he was like no no no it's fine so I get on the bus and actually I I was sitting next to mate and Felix first having a grand old time and then my seat got shuffled and they sat me down next to Crest who I didn't really know and I was just like oh my God I'm at a table with people I don't know at all and then we got to talking and then I think it was there was some need for some mobile or some casual and then I kind of did a couple episodes and now I've been on and off covering casual mobile for about 100 100 episodes um yeah so top correct calls probably too old to mention but I'm gon to mention it anyway a lot of times when I write these articles I write them in soft launch or my calls are in soft launch in Royal match I wrote in softt launch that I'm very proud of I'm also proud of the

match Factory call I think that Chris and I went head-to-head and Eric was like it's mice nuts that's the mice nuts and I was like no it's a game it's gonna be something for clash Quest that was actually I think my prediction was it wasn't going to find product Market fit I think that was correct I want to give myself credit for Monopoly go I knew it would be big except I was wrong in part of it in that I didn't think it would outpace coin master I thought it was going to do very well but not outpace coin master and I think I believe that was what I said on one Whatever episode it was that we did it and that part was wrong the part that was big was right but the how big it was B was wrong I'm actually much better at calling flops and what else I think all of us are right well well I'm not going to share it here but I actually keep a list I actually keep a list of all the games I I call so I can keep an accuracy rating um I have a good sense of a mobile game especially casual puzzle

game apparently have a terrible sense for hardware and Crest was right Apple Vision proos just didn't revolutionize the arvr space as I thought it would I'm hoping I can add yet to that maybe in the future understatement understatement of the century yeah that was probably my biggest public flop I've been very bullish on arvr Apple's tech for way too long all right well let's go a little more into the future well actually let's go into to the past so for the last five years one of the topics we were talking about last week was you know what's changed for the better and for the worse in the industry or what's really funny as we look back on you know industry Trends and things that we've talked about so Adam I wanted to get your perspective on that because you lived and breathed so much of this from so many different big companies genres what's your take yeah I guess I'm coming at it pretty pessimistically but I would say that if I look at 2019 to 2024

versus the five years prior so 2014 to 2019 I'm surprised about how little has changed in terms of Mobile you have kind of the maturation of the platform over time on HD you have the rise of live services in that earlier window so you had launches like Destiny OverWatch fortnite Apex pubg all happening within that window versus now 2019 to 2024 on mobile you have the post idfa slump with substantially fewer breakouts each year and on HD the really has only been about two breakout live Services OverWatch 2 and valerant with sort of two to three breakout premium games per year so in general it's that slowness right like what makes me sad overall is just that decline of creative risk-taking because if I go back even five years prior from 2014 2009 to 2014 in Mobile that was an explosive time when all the time we were looking at the top grossing charts in a new game would pop up and just that diminishing curve in terms of creative risk-taking the amount of new breakouts

that happen each year so that's the part that I think has made me sad but in terms of what's made me excited and and for better has been the games that do break out and are bold consistently challenge our assumptions of what's going on in the market so I still believe that there's sort of underpinnings in the market and signals of like player value what players actually want to play is changing from Year to you deler just said something and it it reminded me of a post that M put in the slack around CH stop talking about idfa killing everything I don't mean it as idfa killed everything cuz obviously there still are successful games I think Nebo actually had a really good post which mate yeah referenced right around the the nature of new games coming up I think we can all agree it had an impact on the mobile industry absolutely it was not the apocalypse that was predicted but it did have an impact and and the secondary impact of like removing fingerprinting was what didn't happen which would have been the

basically the death nail of user acquisition I'm agree with Adam I don't think things have changed all that much in the last five years I think you know obviously Apple's Draconian privacy policies kind of dropped a market that was growing at 20% kager down to down five for two years which is an insane drop even with the covid bump and covid hangover there's still huge huge upending of the user acquisition system destroying stocks like Facebook Unity App 11 digital turbine digital turbine and unity are still recovering right they they may never recover from what Apple has done I would say that the emerging ugc platforms again like obviously Roblox has been around for a long time but epic with ufn but I still think that's TBD as to how much that's going to scale and change how people consume content and of course you can't stop you can't you can't you can't you got to have to say you know the Innovative game design at Netflix right they're really really challenging how we

Define interactive right I mean they've been on the scene dude and doing some amazing stuff sarcas okay but my whole point and I've been saying this for a while is that we are a mature industry for both mobile and console and we've not really seen any new emerging genres coming out of either platform right like Guitar Hero Rock Band toys of life and Wei for the consoles of the older Generations mobile like really hasn't seen anything new in a long time besides like Pokemon go that was a while so again it just seems like the same old type of games or same old genres with different executions and Innovations around the executions and not necessarily Innovations on new type of gameplay so I feel like Chris you've I feel like you've been like staring at idg forecasts a little bit too much like because like in general like when we just talk about macro genres like Shooters right you're kind of blanketing looking back at the last like decade being like Shooters haven't changed Shooters are still dominant it's like but then if you go one layer deeper

you're like no shooters have pretty fundamentally changed in the last 10 years what we assume that things like Call of Duty had a complete lock on the market and now we're looking at and saying no actually fortnite dominates the shooter Market well how long has fortnite been around 2017 wait what time period are we talking about well I don't know which one are you talking about five years five years years I'm I'm poking at the Wii and Guitar Hero and rock band Nostalgia you're going back to I'm like holy [ __ ] I think things have changed since Wii right like I'm looking back in my shelf I'm like yeah the the Wii games are a little different now but to Eric's Point like Battle Royale is equilibrium for Shooters like no one has figured out what's after Battle Royale to his point like there has been some equilibrium finding in a lot of these genres I still think you're ignoring some market segments which have emerged like Tower Defense has come out of nowhere like this thing has just been like revived it's been necromancy AR Knights like they successfully

integrated the squad RPG Paradigm into Reviving tower defense in a new format which blew my mind action RPG with gench and Diablo survivor.io were the Rogue likes on mobile and we're we're just talking about mobile ugc platformer eggy party stumble guys the the one thing I'll say though is in terms of Trends the soulslike And Rog likee thesis around saying that like Rog likes are coming up is the new thing has been the thing for over a decade on mobile or or no everywhere like on PC console mobile even when like go back 10 years ago when Rog leges were getting big on PC right everyone was like oh we've all of these things are going to come over to mobile and it's going to be the new biggest thing we're still waiting we're still waiting okay I agree with you on the genin thing I think genin like solved a Riddle That was vexing right how you make an action RPG on mobile that does really well and and has monetization etc etc etc that

was an amazing thing survivor. I would say eggy Pary and St guys sure but you know that's such a small small small games like on on a revenue basis but whatever but I want to be clear on this point because look in 2012 to 2018 you know we saw insane amounts of things being made just throwing at [ __ ] at the market to see what sticks right we saw Social Casino and a lot of them were conversions from what was going on on the web or going on on Facebook canvas Etc but we had Social Casino Forex puzzles simulation games card-based battle games Squad RPGs came out of nowhere puzzle RPGs came from Asia but they were Innovative and and and modified for the US you know almost everything was kind of new in the mobile space to some degree or created for the mobile space and I just think we're just not in that mode anymore right I mean Investments of Dev are way too big bringing things to Market are more and more expensive and people are just taking less creative risk and doing less Innovations it's all

incremental right and it's just the nature of the mature Market that we're in for both mobile and console I don't think it's it's kind of a feature not a bug in in some ways in terms of how big this Market has become so I don't know I feel like crossplatform layers on to that as something kind of newer that you know when you think of ginin success you know number one it's the meta system that they put around everything and and the way that they've monetized the hell out of that and high what feels like an army of 2,000 more people kind of live oping the [ __ ] out of a game and then taking it crossplatform and having that be a seamless experience for players I don't know that model feels like the things that's going to be table stakes and successful for folks going forward I don't know how you feel about crossplatform as a thing I think there's a lot of overhype on crossplatform just generally speaking but I think you're right that is a trend that's happened over the five years yeah Laura I agree with both so for at least for casual mobile the Everything feels stale but I know

it's not if I look at the past 5 years we had grid merge which is the mer merge mansions and all the copies and every gossip Harbor that Jen and I both love that's come out that's considered new that's very different I also look at tile blast well not necessarily new is inspired a little bit from majang and um other games tile Busters came in and that hasn't been really seen before there were a lot of games in that category but that game brought it to the map going back and taking Popular Mechanics for smaller games that were tested maybe hyper casual and then resurfacing them as polished puzzle audience targeting new style new engine style games so a lot of them I think from a players perspective would feel new even from a from a game develop perspective would not because they're inspired by things we all are very familiar with what I will say is two points one where I'm starting to see new trends is actually Tik Tock so I've been saying for I can't banging my head against the wall saying it is a great

platform for getting game visibility but your content has to be catering to the audience that likes Tik Tok and what I'm starting to see are voice-based games on that platform so new trend is it going to be huge is it going to be the next match three probably not right now and maybe I'll be correcting myself at the 400th episode saying I got it wrong but I I don't think right now Tik Tok is going to become necessarily the next gaming platform but they are doing things that we haven't seen before that could be considered quite different but I do agree with CR I I do feel like the mobile at least the Casual mobile market does feel stale I used to be covering soft launch games maybe every two weeks and now it's it's more copy of what's already done that proven better new when they're making it they must think that like oh my God there's so much new stuff in here no it doesn't it's not new it's been done done by five other games and yeah the hybridization and and it everything is like a a soup of I'm going

to take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and like mix it up in a soup feels like like the new strategy CR completely changing subject but in terms of like things emerging Trends I just thought about this is that the gaming Market in China yeah oh for cons for sure like and PC like that's something I would never have predicted so steam just taking off and basically growing that market in this dramatic fashion of Wukong and all that kind of stuff that's going on despite the fact I was just in Hong Kong in Singapore despite the fact that the China economy is in absolute shits right now like it is a really really scary what's happening with the underlying um economy particularly on the private real estate side and so like the gaming Market is is booming while the economy is absolutely just flatlining which actually we should get Mishka to look at that from a macro he's our macro since these are macroeconomists you know let's see what his opinion is on that but I think partly is because all these games are getting approved so that's like you know just growing growing the business

but anyway that's an emerging Trend that's really interesting not Innova on the product side but definitely something that to be watching going forward 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 demanded subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions world wide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your app's Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's a poal enter Apper 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 datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps sler where your app's potential meets performance all right let's talk about a couple of key podcasts that we liked from the history I think some of you pulled some favorites secret reveal if you found deconstructor of fun on Tik Tok I'm like half running that account testing different content for it so in the process of cutting up uh some of the interviews I've obviously watched them because I have to sit and divide them into little segments and one of my favorite was actually Matt wbl interview I thought that was so fun I thought he was so charismatic yeah loved when he was talking about how passionate he was

with hear Stone and he was like the number one player it I thought to be honest I actually went back and I checked the analytics for all the videos I pulled a Netflix I just threw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck and the most popular by views video was actually our deconstruction of Legend of mushroom with Ken that got almost 20,000 views that's surprised not expecting that Holy but by likes my partner Mark was actually playing a game I can't remember what game it was and the text was way too small so I took a video of him standing maybe two feet in front of the TV to read the text and I just made a little caption that was like what happens when you play an indie game and they don't make the text big enough that actually got the most likes so I was a little surprised at the number of content for that there's been no viral pops yet unfortunately yeah because every old person in gaming is like that's me and liked it I am that person on a on a on a game team team that they all hate because I have no vision

anymore and you know they do font size four on their mobile games and I'm I got the phone like this yeah that's a PSA public service announcement for please get an old person who can't see to look at your font before you ship it and then for twig I'd say the most one of my most favorites was actually the the recent one with Jen and Adam talking about philosophical debates on product because I absolutely love those Oh I thought you were in on that convers yeah let's move that to the shill section that was a sh come on yeah it was it was fun that it was um a little bit more esoteric Mr teler my favorite PO is the valerant origin story I really like listening to any podcast which talks through origin stories of big games in terms of all of the trials and tribulations that they went through just because I think in general successful games are a lot messy than I think people think so I'd love to do

more of that and I also agree with Laura more philosophy I actually really enjoy Joe Kim series philosophy Friday we're hearing from a whole bunch of different leaders who have different perspectives and different Frameworks about how they look at problems so I really like that super quick valerant story which often doesn't get told I don't know if it's because it involves a women or if it's more because it's more operational based but when I was at Riot during the valerant birth they they brought in Anna dalan who revolutionized League of Legends like operations like how do you get Champions out they brought her in to head up the valerant team and nobody gives her this credit but she is the one who came in and like got that thing organized and got it to ship and set this amazing culture she's a beloved leader just a a kick-ass woman who's leading that team and I'm not sure that she gets enough credit for the role that she's played kind of maybe even back a house I know she's on

camera sometimes but everyone always you know talks about oh the game design guy was [ __ ] amazing I don't think we give enough credit to the people who actually like organize it and ship it and get out the door so kudos to Anna on that let's go quickly through a couple of things about how we meet up in person with Folks at events I wanted to talk about the think games zemble Summit that actually you mentioned Laura um I think we're going to be on our fourth year coming up it has like thousand people that go to this I'd never been to Istanbul I think this is where we actually met John Wright from quali and like he's now like our spirit animal or something like this coming out of these you know we also got to and record you know do these different things in person so Crest like what is Istanbul or meeting people up in person been for you no I think the uh Istanbul events definitely a highlight particularly the second one where it was well after covid so there was like a thousand people there I did the keynote I let Apple have it about idfa ultimately being dead

right on the impact and the arrest the adjustments that was made in the marketplace frankly and the first time kind of the the fans were there in in droves like kind of really appreciating the podcast the Israelis were there in force which was awesome there's a dozen arim folks in their vests looking like a legion of nerdy secret service but it was an amazing event and every year continues to deliver so hopefully next year will be amazing I actually don't do in real life so I've never been to these events I'm not sure why you're asking I go to GDC every year and I really enjoy GDC and actually remember when we did our first event at GDC for deconstructor they made the mistake of making me the person that ran the event it was in a small bar that filled up in seconds I totally messed up underpredicted attendance and the whole place was just absolutely Ram with people I don't think anyone could actually talk and then after that

everything got way more professional but yeah uh lots of great memories of them as well as the following years the people met and feedback shared yeah the uh GDC events it's the first time I understood what a Paras social relationship is where people just walk up to you and they start talking to you because you're in their head every week and in my head I'm going through the mental like crap do I know this person who are they and then I'm trying to play the game of figuring out who they are so if you do meet us in person please take a moment to introduce yourself even if we may have met before would be lovely to have that helpful hint and that helpful reminder okay I'm going to go back up to headlines that concludes all of the Milestone celebrations for 300 thanks for sticking with us and thank you thank you guys for coming on and doing story time it was great to get your origin stories all right so a couple things going on oh this is a good one if you like legal battles Nintendo and the Pokemon company Su power world

for patent infringement it isn't about the IP infringement so you could you could kind of tell in the background that somehow Nintendo and the Pokemon company were figuring out what to do about this apparently there's like a killer patent that they've put out there that uh revolves around the mechanic of actually how you catch a Pokemon and you know this what kind of interesting during the same time it it's been rumored that Crafton is looking at a mobile release of poor that came out of mobile gamer. Biz thank you Neil for that little take but I'm fascinating to see the legal drama Crest have you heard anything about this stuff well actually do we know that do we know that that's the patent that they're talking about or you speculating um I saw that in an article so apparently what P the power world developer posted was they have sued us for patent infringement but we don't understand which patents and so someone I think speculated and and put some stuff up that it was this mechanic right so unfortunately we don't know I I think we do not know what the actual

patent is that they're infringing so that makes it really hard to qualify whether they're doing it so from my take on this is that they clearly did not go after copyright which was the obvious one because they were copying characters and that likely they felt like probably wasn't a good case for them so there's either two options really at this point like it's like why did it take so long to build this patent infringement thing are they just doing this to get go after them or did they build up a huge and really like substantial case against them over the last you know few months which is SEC the second one is always the most likely with Nintendo right because what you have to understand about Nintendo they are [ __ ] ruthless about copyrights and ruthless about patents about their technology and their their IP and so they will not stop right until M po world is like smashed into little bits right is just not in their nature to stop on these type of things they are legal rep is Jenner and block which is one of the largest like [ __ ]

intellectual property rights law Firs in the country if not the world they are not to be [ __ ] with they have like tons of others on retainer like kie in the Bay Area my opinion this just cannot end well for B world right but again we need to see what these patents are to see how valid these cases are but I don't think they would bring this without a really really strong case and bring these lawyers to bear and again they will never stop because that is the way Nintendo rolls on this sort of thing so yeah I'm speaking from firsthand experience of being [ __ ] drilled by this [ __ ] coie godor thing on a case against Nintendo which we won actually cool congrat but patent case but anyway yeah they're ruthless got it all right so the next topic is Phil I'm going to tag you in on this one dream Haven unveils the first publishing partnership with fuzzy Bots linked Banner of the spark you wanted to to chat about this what's going on so dream Haven is kind of like blizzard nexs it's founded by Mike morheim and it's been around I

don't know for how many how many years now Eric like they haven't done anything they've raised a lot of money but they've never announced how much they've raised and no one talks about them and this is the first time we've seen them really say something material about a game and they're going to do a publishing label this is fuzzy bot which is a new studio it's a bunch of X dice laa people I used to work with them and I play the game it's it had I believe an alpha weekend it's very interesting title it's a Rog likee action RPG with some Town Builder elements you know think Animal Crossing so we'll see if they can pull off that genre combination as you were talking about earlier Jen but I think the broader story is like dream Haven finally starting to have some sort of material public appearance they have two Studios right now and it was interesting doing the pr press you know PR tour morheim said that they have 100 people employed 30 at secret door which is one of their first party Studios and another 50 at moonshot and we're going to hear more about them very very soon but I I expected them to make a much bigger Splash much ear earlier so I'm not quite sure what they're cooking up right now but this is something to

keep track of so they started in 2020 and my very very very high level understanding is that they are not going after big big big AAA type things they're basically becoming like a Indie type they're doing Indie projects at first anyway and look actually with that only a 100 people you know they're not going to be building you know competitors to to products that they built at at blizzard so I don't know should be interesting to see what they come up with so you don't think this is a this is a a publisher that's about getting the band back together the blizzard BL band back together and like the Phoenix yeah but my understanding is it's more for the love of creating games not for you know building the next Blockbuster Triple A so but I I may be wrong I that that was just kind of my early understanding of what they were trying to accomplish with their first couple projects got it all right the next topic really quick because I love to bring up things that

trigger Crest microsof Microsoft spends a billion on a year on Game Pass titles this is from a Bloomberg interview with Xbox president Sarah Bond they're offering a flat fee of millions of dollars to smaller Publishers alongside a portion of subscription Revenue Phil what's the math I I just don't even think this the sounds right like if you think about the 34 million me that they last reported and if you remember way back when when we talked about the fact that they stopped reporting Game Pass ma never a good sign but if you take their last reported 34 million number and you multiply by let's say 10 bucks a month you know it get you about four billion a year in revenue and if you're really doing four billion a year in Revenue why are you only paying out one you know one billion dollars in content fees like I think you'd want to increase that much more you'd want to make aggressive Investments so like okay something something doesn't sound right and the other thing that they never do with this accounting is they don't talk about the foregone revenue or the cost of first- party titles like they spend all that money to acquire Activision to acquire Call of Duty you know how does that get factored into the pnl so a lot of that gets lost but

there's there's some scorched Earth around this number too nothing to be proud of I would say well and also this is not including all the first party development costs yep which is more than doubled probably with the Activision acquisition so it's like this this is [ __ ] PR again it's like this doesn't mean anything because this billion is for uh third party titles on Game Pass right all right well let's talk about more Dead games Laura so I I picked up just that everdale has unfortunately been uh put to rest again so everdale was it was kind of you're building out a little little Forest Town you were chopping things when did it launch soft launch 2020 under supercell they couldn't get it to where it needed to be so then they ended up passing it to Medicore uh early last year in 2023 uh medicor tried to figure out what to do with it to see if they could revive it and unfortunately they have not been able to I would have loved to see maybe

this is just talking about the soup of making new games but grid merge meets everdale could have been interesting but they probably tried that and it didn't work couldn't find the Right audience but yeah that game is unfortunately going back to the archive going back to the Shelf well since Phil you didn't run into brawl Stars let's run into brawl stars like they are running up the charts they are crushing it I want to look at the sponge boob John Cena promotion they just did to see if that that had anything to do with it what did you see so they are now in the top 10 grossing worldwide they yeah it's it's very impressive it hasn't slowed down it has stabilized they had the SpongeBob SquarePants event at early September which you're were talking about you know if you just look at their run rate it looks like this might be a 600 million a year game but I would argue like you've got to think about where it sits on the pantheon and that this this is a marathon and it's not a race and you start to look at lifetime Revenue across of super celles titles so Clash of Clans is still sitting at7 billion you have

Clash Royale in second place sitting at $3 billion and then in a distant third place you have brawl stars at $ 1.7 billion and of course like all those numbers are good no one's crying but it is a marathon to accumulate billions and billions and billions of dollars so brawl Stars needs to continue this sort of pace you know if they continue to do $600 million per year you know they still have more than a decade to actually catch up to Clash of Clans and Clash of Clans still doing well in and of itself it hasn't slowed down in the last couple years either yeah they have so much firing for them another game that's doing really well is Space Marines 2 continues to crush it Adam what what did you see there I'm playing it have you guys played Space Marine no no not yet it looks like Gears of War right is it very similar to Gears of War oh I should play it I love that game it's fun I like it so VG insights is estimating Revenue at about 186 million on Steam only I have a chart here which

looks at the cumulative units sold in comparison to whole bunch of different games over the last couple years so what's impressive is that within the first 14 days in a launch online manner it looks like Space Marine 2 is roughly matching hell divers too hell divers had that kind of viral growth and kept going versus Space Marine is kind of coming out matching hell divers now but looks to be roughly flat so it's beating manner Lords it's beating most sort of like Co-op Shooters so things like Remnant 2 obviously beating that multiples higher than that but is you know in line with hell divers now will fall underneath it balers gate power world black myth significantly higher rule of thumb I think if you kind of extend out this line um and then you start to say okay where can this end up keep in mind this is steam only so right now it's looking at just under four million units sold in the first two weeks you extend that out for the first month can they get to four and a bit million and then you can start to multiply that to get out to the full year so for example if you look at comps

usually you're looking at like 1.5x to 2x their month one number to get to that year one number so for example Hogwarts 12 million to 24 million for year one versus Elden was 12 million to 20 million for year one which all kind of depends on your discounting strategy so right now Space Marine 2 is definitely on great trajectory especially given the genre but what I would expect is that this is now following a typical sales curve unlike what we saw with things like hell divers and what we're seeing with black myth so this should start to Flatline throughout the rest of the year you think they can pivot into a live service no can they just back into one I mean this has an online component it does but I don't see the developer doing it they're talking expansions and yeah they have a road map they have a road map I think DLC expansions absolutely Mak sense for this game I don't see saber going beyond that speaking of what this is a um embracer team right yeah this a saber yep like their last game was World War Zed which

did not perform anything close to this right like this is a large multiple over what saber typically does with these kind of more licensed Co-op shooter games cool all right what else we got Phil one last update in oldie but a goody raid Shadow Legends has amended itself as the number two Squad RPG in the United States it is now at $9 million in monthly Revenue according s sensor Tower when you look at the time series for this game it has been extremely impressive when you compared to other Western Squad RPGs so if you look at it compared to say let's say Galaxy of Heroes in terms of monthly Revenue it's largely maintained its Pace over time and you start to see a lot of softness in Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes numbers around 2021 but rage Shadow Legends continues to pump a pretty stable number out when you even start to look at where it sits in terms of cumulative Revenue since each of these games launched Galaxy of Heroes has done $1.2 billion according to sensor Tower and raid Shadow Legends has done about a billion so this thing is on Pace to actually overcome Star Wars Galaxy of

Heroes and potentially be like the number one Squad RPG in terms of Revenue in the west which is extremely impressive for this team I thought there were a lot of design problems with keeping Squad RPGs going for long periods of time but to their credit they've seemed to stabilize a lot of metrics and have reached some sort of equilibrium and it's it's even more impressive when you start to look at downloads because it's not as though they're punching above their weight when it comes to downloads it's really about maintaining the user base they've had and continuing to monetize them so Props to the team over at clarium yeah impressive what's getting impressive is that some of these traditional older games are finding ways to stay alive like brawl stars coming back from I don't want to say the dead but they were kind of you know not doing good and like raid figuring out how you know how to come back I think that's kind of the next strategy is many times we kind of throw the baby out with the bath water but you know maybe there our turnaround maybe there's a whole like topic on turnarounds that we should look into is like what game is really figured it out and turned around and what was the history to that and maybe plka is going to do a turnaround because they have

agreed to acquire Superplay a mobile gaming company in Israel for a price ranging from 700 million to 1.95 billion so press please explain to me what's going on with plka why is buying someone for a range how does that even work what's going on all right so plka acquired dice dreams which is an amazing game also their copy of coin Master the game is doing really well they bought it for what anywhere ranging from 700 million to 1.9 billion so this is very similar to the deals that Zinga was doing for a while with Peak and Graham and a couple one other what's the other one anyway but it it does feel a lot like the zingga type strategy where they're expanding outside of their core genres by acquiring big companies that are already scaled and scaling so I think this is actually a really good buy for them plti has kind of been in the in the mud for a long long time their stock is just at a all-time low and they just

need growth drivers and so this gets them there pretty quickly having said that you know their earn outs are pretty egregious so they're only paying 700 million up front and the rest is going to be an earnout so in essence they're GNA have to pay this out probably over the next three years so the question is how profitable is that going to be if they hit these targets and give these earn outs but likely it's structured so that they make a certain amount of profit no matter what level of Revenue they do going forward got it so so the range is from the earn outs yeah got it yeah and so this should be a long-term positive for potika in theory you know diversifying from a the core Social Casino type games into more of the Casual Social Casino I can't believe people are out there arguing that Monopoly go is a social casino game it's it's like there's like a fundamental misunderstanding about how this Market works from some pundits out there because you're not we're not arguing it on a on a market basis we're arguing it from a design perspective basis like

there's no fail State there's a board instead of a slot machine you got to pay attention not just to the market design because you're thinking immediately about all the market implications about what it would mean if Monopoly goes a social casino game I could care less about that what I care is from a design perspective whether or not Monopoly go classifies as a social casino game that is important do you consider it a social casino game so it has all of the mechanics that we know are consistent with Social Casino so you can sit there and you can wager varying amounts of money right you can go to 100 X 200x in terms of the amount of dice rolls that you can make it is true that they have like these other you know battle mechanics which I I would argue are not you know an incredible share of a lot of their sync a lot of it is just beding dice rolling around the board and having probabilistic elements happen that to me is a social casino game it's instead of slots it's this I agree it's in a very new format I agree about the casualization we can split hairs on the genre definition but it has all of the mechanics that make Social Casino have the really high arpo and ltvs that we talked about it has all of those design Staples right I maybe maybe my distinction is on the audience side like

do you think that the core slots and bingo players are Monopoly go fans or do you think Monopoly go attracted a broader audience yes it absolutely has been genre enhancing there's no doubt about that I think the thing that Jen has mentioned which I remained fascinated by but I would love to see more hard data on is that Monopoly does really well in Vegas in terms of slot machines like that IP has been really successful I mean even when you think about like the you know McDonald's game that was that's been around forever like this IP seems to have a really natural fit with casino and gambling and it feels just like Hasbro has never exploded that to the fullest extent so I think part of the story is the casualization and the broader isation of social scanic we were talking about last episode which I completely agree with and I think that's a huge Revolution I think the other piece is really finding IP genre fit this was you know a glove that fit perfectly yeah I think you and I are an agreement yeah this happened last week thank you for continuing it but you you generally agree I think the there's nuances around like what is the center Tower def definition of this and

the competitive set and I think that these games even coin master I would have argued grew what was traditionally Social Casino which was slot games bingo games poker games or casino games which combine many of those together the idea of coin master and Monopoly go I think created a new almost sub genre of Social Casino yeah like there's no element of skill like you can you can wager varying amounts like those design Staples that we we'd see elsewhere I'd love to see the mechanics in other games what about the user acquisition profile of something like Monopoly go coin master or dice dreams right you think oh it costs as much to acquire those users as it does to acquire Social Casino user I think they absolutely unlocked a new CPI profile I mean that's part of the the casualization that we're talking about so basically besides the core mechanics everything seems to be different about this particular game versus Social Casino which is kind of my whole point right yeah I think that's fair it shouldn't be called Social Casino it's a Social Casino Trojan Horse where to a

player the brand and the mechanics like completely hid it it's like what we talk about with uh white out survival all the time how you come in thinking it's a hyper casual game and the next thing you know you're playing a 4X game I think the same thing happened here you come in thinking you're going to play some version of Monopoly the next thing you know you are trapped in the hell of Social Casino I completely agree like there's a far Broad appeal to watching your piece move around a Monopoly board and having the anticipation of what event is going to happen when you land on what piece on the board that is far more accessible than pulling a slot lever and seeing what what combo is going to come up in a slots machine because there's so many different winning combinations of slot machine it's hard to know what's happening and so I think it's the casualization of that that lever pole they've made that lever pole really exciting yeah there's just more stuff going on anyway let's get back to plka buying well it's in the sense that like because so plka this is expanding yes

their gaming like if they clearly will not put dice dreams in their social Casino splot you know they seem to think it's a different type of game and I I agree with them oh interesting this is really good for plka this is part of the thesis we talked about months ago about plka basically saying hey a year ago they're like hey we're not making any more games right like like what yeah excuse me and then like they went through this whole PE type thing I think they tried to reduce cost tried to sell themselves didn't work and now they're basically back on their game making new games and making Acquisitions and I think this is part of their kind of like first you know actually it's a big hit you know big swing you know in terms of getting back to profitable growth so this could be the next Zinga story yeah when I first started covering them they were in the [ __ ] dogghouse until Frank took over and and acquired all these you know great assets so let's see if they can continue and honestly this is the time to do it I I mean I thought the price was a little high like

generally speaking but it's such a profitable game I I imagine it makes sense but because the Market's kind of in the shits and like the valuations are so much lower on mobile games because of the Apple Draconian privacy policies they should be able to consolidate with the balance sheet that they have and the access to Capital so like the game is ripping like dice dreams is absolutely ripping right now like they're over they're 2X up year-over year they did $21 million in q123 they did $50 million in q124 quarter over quarter it's only 14% but that's still pretty impressive so like even if you just throw a 5x multiple on this you're looking at like 1.5 billion so it doesn't seem that crazy to me like the question is really to your point Eric like what do the CPI profiles look like how casual is this game that they see a higher ceiling than what it has right now because they have they're betting on that right they're betting on this game growing and I think it really comes down to what's happening on the CPS side yeah makes sense yeah they can continue to scale it it's yeah overall I

think very positive for plka I don't think the Market's really understanding the benefits they're going to have yeah I think this acquisition strategy is incredibly smart right now given you know number one is how difficult it is to assemble a team make a game from scratch because you have to take a lot of swings a lot of at bats sorry for the baseball analogies but you have to take a lot of swings before you actually hit something so why not you know pay a little bit of a premium and take something that's working put it into your system and make it better it's a lot of what sculle strategy was back in the day Zinga strategy so this makes a lot of sense Laura mentioned that dice streams revenue is growing while board Kings is in Decline so that's kind of interesting I think Monopoly go and the like let's make dice slot machines is the new extension in in this world right and so games with dice and Boards might be just visually more appealing because people are like oh I liked Monopoly go I now want to play another game that does basically the same thing with that me

I'll say mechanic it's just like a skin of a mechanic right Phil I feel like that's how that's it is but I think you know again we were talking about last episode what do you take away from Monopoly go like I'd love to see games like life that's one of the old board games you know what could happen if you use the wagering board mechanic and then layer on life events like how do you kind of pick a different meta structure but kind of keep this idea of spend velocity High because that's what's attractive about social casino to me you can sit there and you say 200x and one Ro you can discor engagement time with mization which is something Match 3 has struggled with like you have to sync more levels you have to play more but Social Casino has disambiguated those two things and that's how they get spend velocity super high that's how you get super high ltvs I remember we were looking at ltvs in the analyst group at scop Le way back when like five or six years ago we all were taking bets on who had the highest LTV the single highest player and we all were like Walking Dead Road to survival which I know you worked on J midcore obviously turns out it was scop Le's earlier slots games ironically enough their dead ones they no longer developing and I think it just really speaks to like this unlimited spend velocity Casino can have and I think

it's just about can we find other interesting casual metas that solve the CPI problem and also do something interesting and I think like I think about Game of Life but I don't know I if I was scopely i' I mean you can't you can't turn down like taking another shot at this like what else can you do you know with this template you know if I get masimo get get him another team get him another creative director and like let's let's crank that's actually really smart yeah I love that and oh my God I had lunch with a friend who listens to the podcast and he's like Jen as soon as you say I don't know if you know but I used to work at a toy company so I'm going to tell a way back machine story really quick because my friend loves these stories and it relates so I used to work at Hasbro I used to you know do all of the Hasbro games and so game of life has been a premium game available on the app stores for like 20 years and like if you go on the store today you will find Game of Life for like $3.99 or something like that it is still one of the only games that is up for a premium price that still sells now it doesn't

sell a lot and it's changed hands over time but Philly I think you're super smart to say why don't you go back mine these IPS that people know and layer on some of these new you know casual plus Social Casino elements to it so Barry dorf if you're listening over at Hasbro go like pitch where object Clue game you know where's the obvious [ __ ] like feels like there's there's a real treasure chest of Ip I mean just looking to be matched with a mobile meta yeah I think people haven't done that to your point I'm as someone who a lot of what I did back in the day was try to do literal interpretations of the gameplay although I think what you're bringing up is really smart which is how do you just take the IP and Crest this goes to what you said last week which is [ __ ] all of your guard rails just go take the IP and go do crazy [ __ ] with it and I think if somebody mind these old IP libraries with that idea you know is there the next kind of gold mugget in the 1849

like let's go sifting for gold that might be a place to go look all right that wraps it up for twig 301 or 300.5 uh we will 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 gamesindustry 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