TWIG #303 Toxic Positivity, Squad Busters Speculation and Roblox 🔥

this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps fer the leader in Mobile 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 apps sler where your app's potential meets performance hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 303 where we read and distill all the weekly game indistry news so you don't have do here's what we got going on today really really big week I thought that our biggest topic was going to be EP versus Google yeah

you know epic coming out on top and that lawsuit but really the biggest news was the hit piece on Roblox now by the Heisenberg research folks so they're branding them as the pedophile hellscape so we'll get into why they say that later on we're gonna also touch on Squad Busters since mishka's back and we can go over your article and I can chime in and then Adam's got a great topic around toxic positivity I can't wait to get into that so we're going to be a little lighter on our quick hits to get to those bigger stories so I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at Jaden Inferno and beta hat and today we have Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting Group yo Mishka katov founder of deconstructor of fun hello hello and Adam Telfer the product guy yeah that's [Laughter] right oh need a better name for you than

the product guy but it's fine all right so chis did you want to Banter a bit about an event yeah we had the bit craft event the annual shareholder meeting Event in San Francisco which was cool to see everybody um scary neighborhood they had it at a very very sketchy neighborhood in San Francisco that has not quite gotten better since the pandemic but these guys really know how to throw out a event like I think Jen should teach like some kind of Master Class in promoting venture Capital firms because he's really good at it so if you've never been to a VC conference it's like a mix of LP investors as well as portfolio companies and it's generally kind of a circle jerk you know of promotion of Investments to investors but for me it's a great opportunity to see kind of where the puck is going from an investment perspective and uh to no one's surprise the whole conference was about AI this year I don't even think blockchain was mentioned once or mobile for that matter right except maybe maybe some distributions strategies but I

don't remember actually anybody talking about blockchain as a matter of fact come to think of it yeah I caught up with Alex teai who has now forgiven me for my insolence around anime Alex te Alex te whatever whatever [ __ ] say her name right she's awesome no of course she's awesome I I had lunch with she's great she's my one of my faves Ryan uh who was the drunk German who asked me if my outrage would make me explode into a super Nova he was there y y i SP it I did it right that time and Aaron who gave the keynote and a bunch of other gaming folks were there thanks to jens's Jasper and Nico for the invite next year it's like I think it's in Singapore next year inshah so we'll see if we can get there oh man that sounds awesome yeah well did you did you speak at the event no no not this time oh no I two years ago in New York I did the key I think they wanted the conference to be more positive thinking about the future they

didn't want CR just I spoke at the play Venture event so so the Venture Capital the way if I'm correct it has to do at least once a year a meeting where it does a meeting for the LPS or the investors at least the biggest investor so that's what they hold it and usually they bundle it together so there might might have been a smaller meeting that is only for the LPS and then they usually do a summit at the same time where they invite portfolio companies and Friends of the fund like CR yeah the LP meeting was early in the morning but the LPS were still there all right okay Mishka uh little shill shill so on the podcast we had Savvy games group CEO Brian Ward fellow Canadian Adam so I thought it was an interesting conversation but I'm gonna quote Philip black this is his message Saudi one was really good you stayed on the Saudi topic and I think it was eye opening for a lot of people that was his quot quote he sent me this today so so take Philip Black's word for it we stayed on the topic and then next week

we got the product guys boss's boss on the podcast so you can figure out who that one is filmed on site in Bona so stay tuned subscribe to the YouTube yeah that's gonna be I also listened to your your Savvy podcast well done I I did learn a lot actually it was interesting to get uh a different take on what's going on there and and how things might be different than a lot of westerners perceive and so I I learned a lot good job Mishka thank you so much thank you I I do this for approvals so but Jen what's going on in La all right so La Tech week is going on San Francisco Tech week I think is now so next week there's two events that I'm going to be participating in they're kind of backtack both of them on October 17th so a16z and apps sler asked me to do moderate a panel on game growth taking your game from zero to 1 million so lots of folks are already signing up

for that really interesting I hold in Cody Christie who is head of growth in UA at Riot to be one of the panel members along with abs and a16z folks also Planet play is doing another Gaming Community happy hour that is at the Google Spruce headquarters the best building ever in the history of headquarters so for both of those you know sign up we'll put links in the show notes I'll also throw it into the slack there's limited rooms so check those out oh and then I forgot different event games Forum SF on October 22nd to 23rd Crest Laura and I are going to be on a panel at the end of the day on the 22nd where we basically go to all of the conference meetings all day and then talk [ __ ] about them at the very end I'm just kidding we're going to summarize them and give our own insights in a positive and insightful manner right Chris no not me no way that's what I thought positive get it again we'll put

the link in the show note use code do25 at checkout for a 25% discount and then come say hi I think it'll be a lot of fun to see everyone in San Francisco Corrections is it one week without a correction I'm sure we should apologize for something right well after this one for sure no yeah here we go all right so just a couple of quick headlines first epic games is lowering its royalty feed to 3.5% from 5% for games made in Unreal Engine and released on launch day on the epic game store they're still trying to figure out how to motivate people to do more on the store it's called launch everywhere with epic this includes mobile iOS is the exception obviously epic is waving the same day release requirement due to Apple's core technology fee and then Phil and I have been chatting about what's going on in Japan and so he sent

a update from cesa cisa which says that Japan's PC gaming Market almost tripled in size from 2019 to 2023 it's up to 1.6 billion from last year so the home of Nintendo is actually seeing a lot of growth in the PC gaming market so it's interesting to see that all right let's move on to a little bit of drama going on with Ubisoft I mean this is the story that keeps giving so we just started following just to get Crest triggered but this kind of turned into a real story The Shu of it this week was the Chinese gaming giant 10cent plans to acquire stake in france-based gaming company Ubisoft from gon family so what's happening with Ubisoft from what I'm hearing in the side guys is that there's a discussion from gimon family to taking it private right that was the announcement that shot it up 30% right yeah and why is that that was [ __ ] like rumor from Bloomberg we don't know whether or not that's true and they wrote a they put together a a press

release basically saying that you know there's nothing special going on right now it's what's they kind of have to do as a public company but the investment that tensent made ages ago was based upon the idea that they would secure more ownership for the family through 10cent right so that they would have even more control so that if a hostile bidder came out they would be able to control whether the the company would would sell or not so we've been talking about this forever it's it was the most absurd and gross misuse of fiduciary duty from a management team that I've ever seen the notion that the company going private is interesting it's possible that that happens you know there's such a such a low price but that would absolutely [ __ ] over all the shareholders of the company like that would just destroy the shareholders but it'd be good for Eve because he can manage that stuff into the manage his company into the ground you know but why did the stock go up like after that that hint of the news the stock shut up by 40% in a day well well the idea is that

a private private Equity Firm or a Consortium of buyers or strategics would buy the company from a premium to where it is right now and so the stock goes up right my sense is that this is a leak on Bloomberg from some shareholder who's like [ __ ] lost their ass I mean that's my speculation I have no [ __ ] idea right but like that makes sense to me but you know the thing is the timing is really odd because the stock has gotten destroyed and there's no real timing to like get a process going and and for this type of thing to leak so I it's it feels a lot more concocted by a shareholder than it is like from the company such a happy group of shareholders it's not like they write should post them publicly yeah but look I mean I think I was thinking about it after I don't even know if a PE firm makes sense like this is too small for a lot of the bigger PE firms it's really hard to underwrite it makes more sense

for a strategic like I said last week I mean Savvy should just take the money out of the mattress and buy these guys you know like or or 10 cents you just buy them outright if it's possible but that wouldn't really help them what they need is a new management team as I've said a million times like Frank Jabo Owen Mahoney like get one of those guys to manage this thing and and fix it to manage a French company hire an American are you serious that's the only way they're going to get better right these guys don't know how to run companies like there's not going to be any cultural shock when a Yang comes into Paris a cultural shock I mean and I hate to say this and and this is not a very popular thing they need to remove like 20 to 40% of the staff like this is not like they're they're in the [ __ ] right now right like they need to cut costs and and get profitable right if they ever want to get public but the reason that like a 10 cent and and Sal makes sense is because they don't have those kind of considerations they can take more of their time and run it unprofitably because what do the Saudis care right they're Lo loed right and

tenset will be more flexible and forgiving I think generally speaking than a PE firm who needs to exit in 3 to 5 years and so they would a PE firm would just annihilate that company in theory would call The Herd in an agre aggressive way but I think a a strategic would make more sense to keep kind of the Kumbaya of a French company to summarize Crest it's either strategic or a Ted lasso should arrive and basically we we've discussed this to death like what's clear is that the company needs new management right there there's absolutely no doubt about that just a question of how that happens you're so proud of yourself M right now for I'm just thinking about like in my head I'm seeing a I'm seeing an American arriving on a private jet to Paris like bour [ __ ] let's get this company rolling they just WRA this like no more of this [ __ ] let's get let's get transactional guys I

mean it would be better for that kind of person than a PE company who would just cut it to the Bone I just find it funny but I'm just imagining in my hand because you know the parisians are parisan I mean the paddles are out like I mean like they get to like electric shock this company I mean there's got to be something big that happens yes the COO needs to be Texan and wear cowboy boots I'll I'll send of my Dallas Cowboys helmet moving on to brawl stars all right let's talk about it yeah so uh Squad Busters just in short we had article Adam thank you for providing feedback on that as well so in that article Squad Busters basically we wrote about how it struggled to match braw stall success despite these 40 million pre-registrations and the massive hype post-launch performance of squad Busters has felt short compared to brawl star for key reasons and those four key reasons in the article were lack of gameplay divers the notion of accessibility versus depth

so it's a very easy game to get into but at the moment there hasn't been that much depth to keep the players going and spending the progression has been quite shallow in the squad Busters compared to brawl stars that offers really a multiple different vectors like and through that offers a various resources such as credits tokens coins costantly motivating players to play in a different way and and Achieve next steps and then the kind of a end piece which Jen did not contribute to and should have is the premature launch so this is surprising thing because you know I've done a couple of travels and I do talk to people outside of my garage and like everybody keeps asking the same question like why did they launch this game like nobody really understands what the [ __ ] happened even companies close to that company and close to that team so they skipped the soft launch essentially when they came into the soft launch they were already going to towards the launch it

was just like it was a s side step not even a s side step it was it was nothing it it was just going towards the the global launch and it was just a formality and that kind of led to this unpolished product not in terms of how it looks but how it performs and after that relatively weak kind of a postlaunch road map we haven't seen anything major happening like there was a Transformers event but that really didn't do much and so we did not cover the marketing aspect and Jen as a goto Market expert what would have you said about the the marketing more money on the brand not necessarily so so first of all my philosophy in all of this is that game teams and marketing teams need to be one team one dream and where you can align everyone against common goals really helps make sure that everyone's doing the right thing for the overall success of the game and the product I think we've moved gone from the the typical am

funnel which is hey marketing you go worry only about acquisition product you only worry about you know the middle and engagement and you know PMs and monetization like economy folks like Phil you just only worry about like converting people to spend money and and I think we're a flywheel now and where we kind of combine everybody together where we have to care about everything so the reason why I'm kind of adamant about this is you know I come from doing this where we did it at scopely which was really really helpful that we were all kind of on this together where you know at sculle and what they've actually done on Monopoly go is you soft launch the hell out of it you really understand that you put it in the oven and you bake it until it's fully ready no Rod cookie dough here you make sure that all of your kpis are kind of in line before you go bigger so there there's a lot to unpack and there's a lot of different elements so I'm only going to pick like you know kind of two of the biggest things that I think worked really well and one thing that worked well and one

thing that didn't so so the prge campaign there's a video I'll post it in the show notes and put it out there which walks you through how you could actually pre-register for Squad Busters inside of any of the supercell games and so on Android this is a brand new feature that I think launched with Squad Busters if you're one of a bigger company you could probably reach out to your Google Play folks and say Hey how do I do this so inside of Heyday inside of brawl Stars you could go in and you had this popup that said if you pre-register for Squad Busters there are Milestone rewards for you to earn stuff in the game that you care about and that you're playing and so that's how they racked up 40 million pre-registrations because I don't care about Squad Busters I want my chicken in the Heyday you know app or I want the Primo in Brawl Stars why wouldn't you just click that button and get your Milestone reward and so like amazing what an acquisition channel that they had now the other thing that they did

was they hid all of the Milestone numbers so you didn't know exactly how many you had to hit to unlock that reward so it ked the little bit of like fomo like what happens if they weren't hitting their numbers and so brilliant brilliant to put little question marks and when that you hit the mil look we've unlocked a milestone isn't that amazing everybody well done on that so the thing that was super challenging for them and the fail was that if you can't convert those 40 million people into a game that has kpis that are actually working it's called The Leaky bucket and so for me the fail was not necessarily the fact that they decided to do a really big trailer with Thor as the Barbarian I respect and give them a lot of kudos for taking a shot at this old school marketing I might disagree on the amount of the investment we think it was between like you know 1520 million to just pay the talent and make the

creative let alone like what they gave Jeff key a lot of money to put it on summer gamefest and things like that but I think it was the wrong time the product wasn't ready for that kind of effort so I think there's a new formula in watching in kind of launching these games which is you can't just do the triaa like we're going to launch and so we're gonna spend all the money right on day one you kind of can't do that if you're not going to be able to convert those people in so for me it's like slow CTI wins the race kind of like the tortoise in the hair you got to have the social features and everything to kind of convert so there's so much more but those are the two things but in general why do you think many teams get enamored with this approach this isn't the only game that has attempted this and I think there are other teams that have been considering more of this type of triaa launch without effectively soft launching for long enough and I think last week when you guys had the podcast you were talking about genin impact and I think like why game devs don't do

the same thing and I think this is kind of the same thing like genin launched two SKS without really soft launching on PC console a little bit of soft launch on mobile and did The Impossible and then you look at something like cod mobile where I think even when we had the podcast on COD mobile we were looking at it being like the retention doesn't look strong RPI does not look strong why are they globally launching Cod mobile and they stuck The Landing right and I think PC console live services do this too like my interpretation of why this happens is I think people get enamored with this approach because of survivorship bias so they point to Apex Legends Cod mobile genin instead of understanding all the failures and I think this one's a big enough one that I think it'll Shake people but I think that's also why people get enamored the teams believe that in order to generate the hype for those massive install outcomes you can't do these soft big long soft launches the hype dies down many people get their

hands on it anyways because it's relatively easy to pick up the game in another Market anyways so how do you still build up that same hype and I think when people get enamored with like that approach it becomes difficult for somebody on the team to stand up and say well what if the game is bad what if the game is a leaky bucket then the team is in full-blown toxic positivity mode which we'll cover later but yeah Jen do you have any thoughts on that yeah I think that you know it's a good point and I'm seeing kind of three different ways that companies are coming to Market and it's also very different in the East so when you look at the mihoyo verse and what they did with Zena Zone zero they had three closed betas the first one was a week the second one was four weeks and the third one was only three weeks then you've got what Squad Busters did which was a bunch of closed betas and then I guess they said you know they they're like we're in soft launch and then on day two of the soft launch they said we're launching in month so I I don't

even know if I would count that hybrid model as a true hybrid but it could have been an option for them and then you know obviously looking at What Monopoly go did which is the traditional scopely soft launch which is Tech test first in you know the Philippines and then I think what they're doing differently is what I loved about the model they looked at tier one countries that could best represent the US so they looked at the Netherlands and Norway and when they got to the point where things were looking good they started to scale in those smaller countries to see if they could generate that interest that you're talking about and so for a couple of months they were scaling in the nordics they saw it was working kpis look good then they're like okay let's up it in France and saw that was looking good and then they went for the global launch and that's really about turning on UA and and by the way and even in the challenges with idfa UA still has a huge role to play in launching the games for

me like that is the new way to launch a game looking at how Monopoly go really decided to scale in a single country to understand that the kpis were there to be able to do it that feels like a very traditional mobile soft launch approach which obviously I'm very aligned with I think that's the right approach for mobile but then when we look at genome when you look at Squad Busters and the type of game that they're building and the type of launch that they were trying to create where they believe that it was much more about driving hype and they wanted that big splash moment right that's where things came an issue and like some like Squad Busters didn't do a soft launch the version of their soft launch was they did these closed betas and I don't think those closed betas are actually terribly predictive of what will happen when the mass Market plays the game I think it can be predictive of golden cohorts but I don't think it's preductive of scaled so like to me I'm like I look at zenist and I look at Squad Busters and I'm like I don't think

those two paths are viable right now so what is the right approach when you're not sort of like a a casual game on mobile when you're trying to go for these much bigger hpe games like Squad Busters zenas genin Apex yeah know I I I think it's some sort of hybrid that has closed betas to get the feedback from players to start to get their interest and then you know my Reco would be to do more with the soft launch like I think if Squad Busters had actually done a little bit more and then held their fire on their bigger awareness until they knew it was resonating that's what I would have done but you know there's a little bit of hindsight they would have done a longer soft launch period so that like yeah but the soft launch specifically that phase would have lasted significantly longer you're saying yeah I mean I I I think that's what we're all saying right Mishka you too I mean I think all of us were scratching our head of like why didn't you all leave that out like what was the

downside how in the [ __ ] do we not know why this happened right this is so uncharacteristic of supercell there must have been a reason from an executive perspective or investor perspective something that pushed them to release this thing way too early like it doesn't even make sense like that they did this that's what that's what my question was around like how people get enamored with that approach like why do they all of a sudden say like soft launches aren't worth it anymore we need to put every dollar down before before we've got this data I think it's because you get enamored with that gench I've heard stupid stupid stories and I've heard like to some hypothesis that I kind of would believe the basic hypothesis was just that they've done a lot of long self launches flash mini was two years flash Quest was what year and a half and so forth and this was some of the hypothesis that was given from from people close to the company not working at the company but they were just saying like like the management was just like hey let's [ __ ] go let's put in a date and let's la lach a game and let's get

everybody behind it we love this game I remember visiting the offices and people were wearing the hoodies and I was like can I get a hoodie because I was like enjoying playing the game I was like give me a squad Busters like after like first couple of weeks I really loved the game and I was on board like I was hyping this game up I was saying this is going to be a billion dollar game so I was drinking the Kool-Aid and I imagine being there and just you know like like we're going to [ __ ] do this like finally we're going to release a game it has all our characters it's a fun game everybody enjoys it and maybe there was some toxic positivity going on where right Adam where people just did not voice out like there could have been some toxic positivity that could well there's disagreeing commit too right like if you're saying that leadership was like let's go I mean you you got to just get on the train at that point as a worker like Jen I'll I'll say this I knew that this game is going to launch before it was in soft launch like I heard you know from from a bunch of people even from platforms that that we

used to promote it big channels that this is coming and this was before soft launch so who's responsible and who's getting fired that's all I want to know I we know this is this a CEO problem I mean like what is happening no no it's just like all I I knew from the beginning was that everybody's excited and I was excited I'm not [ __ ] on this game at all I was super excited I get it I was drinking the Kool-Aid I was in the par I was like let's [ __ ] go but this was determined before soft launch that's what I'm saying well I mean hopefully they learned their lesson right like you can't will it into being and I think you know they had had so many failures in their soft launches I think they just decided they're like well you know we're going to stop listening and we're just going to do it do it and I think that going big is is cool but you can only go big if you're ready yeah and say say what you me

Jim it's cool but it's stupid well yeah no I I I would have waited I mean I think I've told the story before but when I joined Zinga on FarmVille there was a TV commercial that was in testing and it was kind of at the birth of mobile and you know it was fine it was okay but I was looking at the numbers for the retention of the game and I was like oh my God why on Earth are we going to drive people to this game when the retention is where it is and so luckily the test Market numbers weren't that great and so I was like let's pause everything on doing this TV campaign because the numbers aren't there we have a leaky bucket and so I think that's where if you're a true marketing partner you're not out to do cool [ __ ] that you're truly concerned and your your results match the results of the team your marketing partner should come to you and say not sure we're ready to do something like that and and not I'm not blaming the marketing partner at all but

I'm just saying line all of these things up when the game is ready everyone has to fire at the same time I'll just do one Insight from me I we have in the biggest newspaper of Finland which is Tiny most of five million people but nevertheless we have main News newspaper and supercell was doing a Victory lap like before this game went out on soft punch like was it maybe it was before or maybe it was during the first week but they did like the interviews and everything like this is [ __ ] like but again I was all in they called me from the news newspaper I'm like yeah this game is looks really good I've been playing it for a week I was like I have nothing bad to say so just saying that I drag the Kool-Aid as anybody but but they were doing a Victory lap you infilled the whole like podcast on like this is great yeah and Matthew Matthew is the real consultant he wasn't he was like I don't think this game is that great shut the [ __ ] up Matthew this is awesome the metrics and soft launch were [ __ ] terrible they were absolutely terrible that's why Philip I don't even

understand why Philip got all in the bandwagon on this because if you could just look the RPI at these tier one countries think it's easy to get enamored and easy to get sucked up in the hype it's the same thing in PC console you look at any of these games that have these amazing betas and people get excited before launch but it wasn't an amazing beta I think that's that's the point right that's a point no sorry I'm talking about other D but in the case of squad Busters you're in the pre-launch phase m is able to actually play it it's easy to get caught up in that H yeah so you have to be able to put on like real objective lenses and be able to cut off like beyond the hype what do we think this is actually going exactly and Adam I was in the situation where I because supercell has done always very rigorous testing and always kills at babies so I was like if this game looks that they're launching it even before soft laash this must have Banger retention numbers like like something where this has never been done before like they're seeing absolute like you know Miracles and they had their

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so Laura frier posted on YouTube a video called culture killed Concord if you don't know Laura you should she's been in the industry since the late 90s 21 game credits including Gears of War to human Zoo Tycoon and really an industry Legend from Microsoft and epic games an industry legend that has a great YouTube channel and actually talks a lot in detail about her experience in games so this video speaks about talk positivity which is specifically Concord but let's not retread on Concord I think it's better to talk about the concept of positivity because I think it's pervasive in games so many of the games that we've talked about on the podcast over the last year Concord Star Wars Outlaws suicide squads Skull and Bones Warcraft Rumble Squad Busters likely were impacted by toxic positivity because to be honest every Studio I've been a part of has toxic positivity I used it my myself when leading games and

I think the interesting topic is more when and why it turns into a toxic culture so the examples that Laura talks about are when developers either ignore or refuse to seek out feedback from their staff or feedback from customers of the game and then fail to Pivot when the market is signaling strongly that this game will fail so her examples from her own past were building an MMO when World of Warcraft came out building Gotham City imposters when there is clear feedback from players rejecting parts of the concept specifically characters so I think toxic positivity happens because game development is [ __ ] hard like [ __ ] hard games go through cycles of really high and really low conviction and no game would be built if teams had to maintain High conviction throughout the entire production that just has never happened on hits and not

hits so commonly you're at prototype throwing ideas together everything's amazing and then production hits and holy [ __ ] all of our ideas we assumed in Prototype are garbage and now we're pivoting at gaining systems this happens all the [ __ ] time so you're now navigating an extremely difficult production phase where you're trying to Pivot systems getting things to better and you have this noise of managing a massive team of passionate Gamers who also play like a lot of games and each have vastly different opinions about what's going on so this is where toxic positivity starts to create and then adding on top of layer especially at larger Publishers you have Executives that can't understand why the game isn't fixing the problems fast enough so you've got to manage all of this noise so leaders adapt they focus on the positive they keep the vision of the game strong and they move momentum forward instead of second guessing every decision decision so that's what positivity does positivity means

progress so in many cases that positivity ships actually great games right like when a team finally gets the pieces together because they've championed the thing they've got it all that point they can iterate quickly in that last cycle and then the game comes together and things come and become much more positive and I think those stories become what I hear a lot of in those mid- production low conviction states where it's like yeah the game is usually pretty rough right now in this stage but wait until the next build or hey yeah it's bad but this team shipped X that came together at the last minute so hold on or we're ex we've turned this around before holding on to that Hail Mary so I think those are the types of statements that points to it and I think toxicity pours in when it becomes a cult of positivity where negativity is shunned from staff and from market research and teams just go very defensive but I think like the one context around

the games we've been talking about games like Concord Skull and Bones these were eight plus year Productions the likely reality is that they were listening to feedback early they were iterating they were constantly pivoting but five to six years into that production you're out of time you're done right you now have to start shifting towards closing mode which means horse blinders are on you ship this thing so I bet that the team went from went into toxic full toxic positivity mode because they needed a ship and doubting the direction anymore would prevent that so what do you do about it like what what can we do about toxic positivity I think the simple answer is you build a culture of feedback and you make voices heard and I think this sounds great on paper but we're talking about massive teams and I think you have to figure out how to have make decisions about what feedback is needed what isn't helpful how to make progress but still ensure iteration

since reacting to all feedback will lead to longer death Cycles which inevitably as I talked about it will turn into toxic positivity all the same when you're basically for forced to close the thing so I think like the solutions are actually a whole bunch of different things like yes we have to listen to feedback we have to respond and build the right processes and forums to synthesize feedback rather than continually randomize the team you have to have harder conversations as early as possible don't hide behind temporary assets or weak builds because there's an excuse to wait for True feedback have those harder conversations early find ways to be able to create those harder conversations early instead of hiding behind saying this stuff is temporary it's all going to come back later on and I think the hardest thing as Leaders is we have to find ways to break out of our positivity we have to lean on Research lean on external team members to give candid feedback find people that can snap you out of these things so that you can give a safe space for people to be candid and look for signals when your

team is reacting NE negatively and going to a place of being too defensive to to teams like research and feedback so it's difficult but find ways you can effectively iterate even when in production like settings that has a lot to do with tools and culture and as well I think some of the more difficult things is making sure you're setting the bar High Enough from the onset don't wander into production with sort of a weekly competitive plan or like a comparative we're just going to match what's already out there in the market assuming that you can kind of iterate towards your special thing you've got to be able to nail that before I I think you're saying things that really resonate with me in my year my many many many years of working with game teams the hardest thing I ever have to do in working with the game team as a product marketing ninja and and now I do a lot with consumer insights is how do I tell a team their baby is ugly it is really really difficult to do that and so we try to do it in ways that's like well

here's what's good about what it is and and here's what we need here are the you know opportunities and barriers and we try to put the goal out there and say well if you can get to you know if you can make these changes here's kind of the business outcome or the overall outcome that you can get so I think what you're saying is how do you be more open to hearing that feedback one of the things that I do as your as your partner is I try to number one is play your game and understand your game better than than just or just as much as you all do and in doing that and and cultivating that relationship hopefully I start to earn your trust also when we do consumer insights work I involve the product team and the dev Team every single step of the way I ask them what questions they want answers too that way it is much more difficult for them to [ __ ] on the results if they were involved in the entire process and I know that sounds like a Jedi mind trick it is not meant to be that it is meant to be truly inclusive to make sure that as we go and we spend the time and money to talk to players that we get the right answers

the other thing I would really recommend that people do is engage influencers and players at the beginning of the game development process even at prototype this is what we're seeing as like the new way of game development I mean you look at we'll talk about it later but you look at ROBLOX like these people spend two weeks they throw a game out there if it resonates great if it doesn't you know they throw it in the trash and I'm not saying that triple A needs to work that way but even you know the big guys even the Riots of the world and and people that have left Riot are now involving players at the very very beginning because it's a lot easier to get that harsh feedback when you're at prototype than when you're three years in and you're like oh [ __ ] I can't change this this is a lot of my current focus of what I'm doing as a consultant is at these early stages and so I would just really encourage folks to be involved in research really listen everything that you were just saying at it makes a ton of sense and then look at ways to bring in players and influencers earlier yeah this was a super interesting topic thanks Adam for bringing this on when you posted this on

our Channel I was like oh wow let's jump in I watched the video the video was called culture killed Concord if you want to search it from YouTube much recommended it's only 11 minutes so it's a it's a fun watch it is a fun watch very close topic because as a head of Studio of several different studios I've probably failed on this more than I've succeeded so I was kind of like retrospective in many ways to think about this my first take when I was watching this video of like culture killed a game was like you know here we go again it's all about the culture and then I was just like in my mind hearing Simon cynic coming in what is your why what is your why and and that kind of stuff and and I'm I'm starting thinking about it because culture in many ways a very fake umbrella term that really describes anything and everything like Jen you were talking about the importance of market research and talking to the players and so forth that is part of the culture so so in that sense it's kind of vague there's no sort of a standard metrics to

measure it and and very few companies have actually defined what their culture is and even fewer of them have actually implemented the culture that they have defined yet every single company that almost is out there is promoting their culture that is for everyone and thus for no one so I asked my good friend Chad gbt hey Chad gbt what is culture and it told me like there are these elements like it's behavioral Norms it's values and beliefs it's work and environments leadership style rituals and traditions communication style Employee Engagement and motivation as we can see from this it's like very very hard to measure and when we think about the culture does does culture prevent you from making great gains that's kind of like a question that I was starting to think about because I'm trying to understand correlation and cality and I was instantly thinking about Rockstar cuz famous about their culture to a point where everybody has an NDA once they

leave Rockstar we know these things like their their games are phenomenal and we know from the news like for example Red Dead Redemption 2 insane crunching that happened like we can I think all agree that crunching equals bad culture right well if we if we think about that way then then red bed Redemption fortnite had had a lot of crunching issues Fallout 4 like all these teams probably did not have the greatest culture maybe but nevertheless they were able to to make very successful games so what I'm not trying to say that you don't need to have a good culture of course it's more likely that if you have a good culture you're more likely make great products I'm just trying to say that there's a correlation but not necessarily A cality between a culture and product success and another point that I was kind of thinking about is that I've been at companies where I felt you know unhappy but but it was only me because the culture or the way of working of that

company wasn't suitable for me but nevertheless it was very great for other people and they enjoyed it and so in that sense like it's very hard to say what is a good culture and what is a bad culture but nevertheless I digress in this specific case when it was discussed that they had a culture of toxic positivity and I thought about like what is the culture that is anti-toxic positivity culture and in my opinion not having worked there but read the book n definitely seems like the type of a culture that had these elements so I'm just going to mention five of these elements of Netflix culture that is in their wider culture book like freedom and responsibility where essentially when you make decisions you're also accountable of whether they work or not uh a culture where high performance where they only hire the a talent and they're known for kicking out a person if they're mediocre performance even though they trial really hard they have this Infamous keeper test where manager is being asked if the person were to leave the company would you fight hard

to keep them a culture with with cander that they're known for where where they get feedback and people are encouraged especially to give feedback to their bosses because when the boss makes a mistake it's probably larger than individual contributor the the notion of having a team over a family and and overall the transparency where data is given to everybody so that they understand the context and The Business of where they operate and can make decisions according to that so I don't know kind of long-winged but what do you guys think like is really the culture that killed it or you mentioned like culture doesn't drive results I think there's the game outcome project which was a while back which I think looked at a pretty vast data set of game outcomes and had very strong evidence of causality in terms of cultures impact on the game outcomes instead of just looking at it to take two examples so like I would point to that and I think they actually came up with a whole bunch of really really strong factors about

what they believed drove the outcomes of those projects and obviously like on all of those different axes you have some games that lean more into Crunch and they believe crunch did not help the outcomes right but like they also leaned in better onto other axis and that's why they believe the outcome was strong so that I would definitely take a look at the game outcomes project for a pretty strong out project definitely look at that yeah on like on culture's impact and then they go into specific elements around transparency and around cander of the team and how important that is for the outcome yeah so I would say like yes like team cander is a strong Factor within and I think game outcomes project kind of proves it that cander is and I've seen like the the difference between teams that do have high can or not I just think that the the Nuance there is that it is really hard to enable High cander when you're in late production of the game and Things Are incredibly hardened and so then producers have to move into that

mode of like okay we got to make progress we got to move so there's one point of like how do you have that high cander even more early on in production and predict to success more but as well like how do you build the right tools engines processes so that when you can have that high cander which is typical at the end of a production you learn the most about a game you know a year before launch you have the best tools for understanding it how do you make sure that then the team can pivot and iterate at that point and I've seen sometimes when teams are built on bad engines or they're built on inflexible code bases then they end up in a situation where they can't iterate they they can't act on the feedback that they've gotten and now they're they're just launching the thing so sorry to point it back back at Tech but like that's been my experience so the the the point is more like some of these good qualities are overemphasized like cander for example it's overemphasized over transparency and sort of a respons ability would leads to sort of like imbalances is is

that the way more like the high we we could cover it in a fature POS but the game outcome project listed a whole bunch of different factors that they believe like bubble up towards culture and so they they measure things like a high cander culture was a strong predictor of game outcomes right but it was just one of the predictors obviously there's other elements that predict a game outcome there's a really great book called Radical cander by Kim Scott but please take away that cander doesn't mean you can be an [ __ ] cander means that everyone can express their opinions in a respectful way growth oriented way and yes so just I I I want to make that plea yeah yeah when you give feedback I think it's in the book of the cander it has to be relevant meaning like it's it's coming right at the correct time it has to have good intent and it has to be actionable and so those are I think I was remembering those are kind of like the key pillars not just saying like

yeah you know you always [ __ ] this up can and you always have to kind of calm yourself down even if you if you feel pissed before giving the feedback but it's a it's a really good book I remember like I read it and tried to get everybody on it but I found it even personally to be quite difficult to give caner feedback and create that type of a culture because it is pretty rough and yeah yeah yeah so there's also a podcast which is great and I think I've I've been pretty transparent about I mean my own challenges is my parents are New Yorkers I'm pretty direct I think you guys called me a Taskmaster I I I want to get things done I want to I want to do a great job yeah and and so sometimes especially as a woman direct feedback can be misconstrued as being a [ __ ] whereas if I was a man it would be oh I'm really direct and straightforward and super clear and yeah and so I've had

my challenges over time where you know people say I'm intimidating and I'm me and I'm rude and it is a very difficult and I I've had to take that feedback and and really soften my approach while still being candid and so books like that or never split the difference by Chris Voss the FBI hostage negotiator really helped me figure out like how do I have tactical empathy which is the idea of you empathizing with someone but still getting your point across anyway all right so let let me close out on that let's get to Google and epic and chis I want to re-engage you I'm sure you're in the background playing while right now I know this is like painful dude like if you know dude just yeah all right just how about this I'll give you I'll give you a quick one just hire me I'll tell you why your game is not going to work and then you can go from there well or stand in beta hat like this is what we do F St in a beta hat just hire me what I'll do it for [ __ ] free all

right he's an alpha hat that's what Eric is he's Alpha and and you want like direct feedback without like worrying about the consequences that's what you come to me for or you go to McKenzie and spend thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars on [ __ ] that tells you nothing right so yeah just just call me that's all you need to do first stop call Crest all right so here's what's going on with uh epic epic wins again and gets what it asked for from the judge in the Epic versus Google case so I'm going to pull from The Verge they did a really nice kind of summary of all of the different things going on so Google's Android App Store is an illegal Monopoly according to the judge actually according to the jury because this originally came about because it was a jury trial so it's going to have to change a bit so at at a high level they have to effectively open up the Google Play app store to competition for three years Google will have to distribute rival thirdparty app stores within

Google Play and it must give rival thirdparty app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps unless developers opt out individually and so let's just go one level deeper and of course this could all be held up upon appeal November 1st is when this is supposed to take effect the judge is like November 1st Google that'll give you time to be able to do all of this right so there are ing obviously so we'll see if this date actually sticks they're going to have to stop requiring Google billing they're going to have to let Android developers tell users about other ways to pay from within the Google Play Store allow developers to link to ways to download their apps outside of Google Play and set their own prices for apps irrespective of play billing there's more Google also can't share app Revenue with any person or entity that distributes and Android apps to or plans to launch an app store or app platform

so this starts to go to like Samsung the Samsung store they can't do those rev shares they can't offer developers money or perks to launch their apps on the Google Play Store first and they can also not launch their apps on Rival store so Google has is is basically like super constrained and what they're going to be able to do they can't do rures they can't incentivize people to do exclusives or not go someplace else which is kind of weird crust when I think about a little bit of the old school when I used to do you know buy end caps at retail or do retail exclusives I don't know I felt a little bit bad for Google but Mishka you want to go first yeah I mean I was just thinking about because this is kind of like a dma territory and I was thinking about like what are the implication for mobile developers from these rulings is is like first one is like again these are very theoretical like one is wouldn't we increase the revenue opportunities because like now you have third-party stores that reduces the dependence on Google's platform and

billing system which means you can bypass the fees which essentially increases the profit margin theoretically number two is of course the Diversified distribution channel so if you have more different stores third party stores maybe they could you know encourage competition through cost maybe they will take less than 30% maybe they could help you with user acquisition let's say if epic store would have been as big as they probably wanted I don't know if it will grow to that maybe that helps you with the user acquisition by by having another Channel there but at the same time like what definitely would happen is if there are third-party stores that have exclusive apps in it let's say Microsoft launched their third party store and it has Candy Crush it has Call of Duty and so forth could that create a little bit of a confusion because we've kind of as mobile Gamers used to having that one store one payment model like what would happen when there's multiple different stores it's just in terms of like consumer Behavior user interfaces

Etc and then the final one is like what are the broader antitrust implications because this is a ruling that is stepped toward addressing the monopolistic practices of major tech companies and in the direct Market act like it says that there's core platform services like Play Store and there are Gatekeepers which are entities that operate these core platform services in this case Google and then from the lenses of dma App Store distribution is seen as a public good utility that needs to be operated in a way that promotes competition so that's why the rulings are so interesting and The Gatekeepers actually have to themselves demonstrate that they're creating this Fair reasonable and non-discriminatory policies that aren't pre referencing their own products nor blocking competition so having these sort of standards within the dma it really opens up the door for also future lawsuits or

different regulations and potentially that in the long run will affect most significantly app distribution as a whole so that was kind of are you usbt to give your tape no this one was from our podcast with as good of as chat gbt which is rch Stonehill from stash so I opened up that one and just literally copied what I wrote he must be salv can you imagine look those folks I I appreciate the fact that dude epic is is winning the just fight like clearly like they came out and they went against these the B myths and they are winning and which is great and all but from consumer perspective I still don't see how people are going to adopt in Mass these type of alternative stores when they already have all their information in put into Google or information apple and like they trust that Source this is how they've been trained for the last 14

years on how to get apps right so now you're going to try to convince them to download a secondary store and buy I mean I think it's Herculean just on a on a on a functional level but I I think this is all great news but it's just like the practicality of it all just seems imp possible yeah I agree 100% I think we talked about this before which is the friction of going through and jumping through all the different H Hoops you know Apple and Google have made it so incredibly easy to make that purchase yeah and even even if they fix that but still yeah customers want to try a new store like what would could incentivize them to do that right well it's why web 3 has been such a challenge there's so much friction in that whole process that you know if they were ever to fix the web 3 connectivity and the wallets maybe that going to have a shot but I I just don't think they can get there all right let's

get to our last story which is Roblox so this is from the Hindenburg I almost called it the Heisenberg thinking about uh breing bad inflated key metrics for Wall Street and a pedophile hellscape for kids is the title of the article it is not my personal thing and so Hindenberg is a short seller until crestle ask you a little bit more about them later it sounds like they're like almost like the investigative journalists of Wall Street so Roblox had a tough Tuesday after Hindenburg a notorious short seller came swinging in with allegations that the gaming platform is playing fast and loose with its numbers the report accused Roblox of inflating user data and failing to protect its youngest players from harmful content naturally the stock took a dive so it was down about 10% in early trading uh deep fall for the platform that's been a favorite for younger Gamers I think it came back up a little

bit from that ini initial dive so the hindberg claims that Roblox has been cooking the books by counting Bots and duplicate accounts as individual users according to the report roblo da count may be overstated by 25 to 42% and while Roblox claims its users are spending hours immersed in the digital platform Hindenburg suggests a lot of that engagement comes from Bots are just there and they're bought farming the bigger piece that was really disturbing was they painted a grim picture that the platform safety features are just not there they claim Roblox isn't doing enough to keep Predators at Bay and for a platform with millions of young Gamers it's a serious accusation uh Roblox wasn't quiet they came out immediately and they shot back calling hindenburg's report misleading and driven by the short sellers agenda in a statement they emphasize that the user safety is a top priority and that the financial metrics they report are

accurate roblox's defense comes with some Financial backing the company saw a 22% boost in bookings year-over-year and reported 576 million in free cash flow for the second quarter so despite their aggressive rebuttal the stock fell 99.4% before regaining some ground like I said earlier so the eye of Sauron is on Roblox on both of these topics so Chris first talk to me a little bit about h ber and and why you think they targeted Roblox but I think that all of these platforms suffer from what do you call them alts or Smurfs or Bots or fake accounts I mean I we call them Smurfs at Riot they quote a former Roblox data scientist as saying if the da numbers are not dealed I think the actual one would be anywhere between 20 to 30% lower so tell me a little bit about how you see this well first of all this is absolute scathing report on robloxs we saw a similar report on skills not from

the same firm but from a different firm which resulted in them ultimately going to almost zero so but despite the click baity headline which I think is a little bit OB scene um this firm is super legit like you cannot ignore or deny them their qualifications in this world this is not some NBA guy who's just throwing things out there to support his trade um having said that these guys short stocks so they are short roadblocks and they say that in the report and so they are hoping stock goes down but they clearly did their homework on the company and and I think I I think they are absolutely right and I've been saying this for years right is that that roadblock overstates their metrics they have insane stock-based comp the market is totally saturated and they are promoting user growth at all costs without significant and profitability all that is I think is true so that what

they got but I think what really kind of falls down a little bit is their reporting on the content moderation stuff and and also from the profitability perspective they have gone cash flow positive if you deduct stock-based comp which is huge and that's I think over the last six to nine months they've been they've been actually profitable but the content moderation thing is likely where I think the most attention is going to come and the most kind of egregious things that they uncovered I mean it was horrific like some of the the content that they found but to be clear it is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the actual engagement is on these absolutely horrific type things and these are likely the things that get pulled down from their pretty you know aggressive moderation so anyway I think you have to pull it back a little bit but nonetheless some of some of the games that they pointed out just hilarious on the surface like one was

like this like the game where you can beat up the homeless people outside of 7-Eleven know this at 900,000 visits right beat up the pregnant was the name of another game you just like hacked pregnant women to death outside of Walmart what the [ __ ] yeah no they got to pull that one down it gets worse no keep going we played guns work at a hospital where you can go into a hospital shooting rampage this one has 1.6 million visits and remains on the platform with no age restrictions according to the police and then the other one is the Palestinian and Israeli hangout which is super relevant these days allows kids of all ages to purchase bombs knives and guns and attack each other 13 million visits 7200 favorites and then the last one and I think the one that is probably getting a lot of attention is that as posing as a child in Roblox therapy experience a therapist

introduced himself as a rapper with only one p where he was advised to run away from home and would come pick us up so we could move into his basement exchange paying rent with your body so that's from like Eminem Rhymes because that that was his latest one honestly I will be the first one to say this is not representative of the platform I I think they do a lot of other agre [ __ ] in terms of the monetization that do but these experiences literally are a fraction of a fraction of a percent but hindberg is a very very very very well retrospect firm and they they basically called DraftKings this company called Nicola and clover all of which resulted in huge declines in these companies calling out insane activities of what were happening there you know Nicola was shares went down 11% after the announcement that they were misleading investors about their technology and now the stock is down 99.5% it's basically almost out of business DraftKings was down 50 to 15 in

12 months Clover has been down 72% since they made a short stock call in uh 2021 so having said that the stock has recovered right it's basically almost back to where it was before this announcement it has been off recently and there all some fundamental things that are going on with Roblox that may actually hurt the stock in the medium term anyway but if any of these type of things start to like kind of get uncovered and more research is done and if any government agency gets involved [ __ ] hell dude Roblox is going to be toast that's the big concern so I think from a roblo perspective they just have to get out in front of this and in you know ensure that this is not nothing to be worried about but yeah we'll see yeah the there there's a bill in the US government that is kind of stock for children's Online safety everyone agrees we should do something but what we should do is is always under disagreement so if I were them I would be actively aggressively trying to figure out how they can address that

piece of it so that the government doesn't do it for them and you know come out with their own hey here's W how we're going to police ourselves and and stop these kinds of things I want to be crystal clear here they they have the best content moderation in the business like there's nothing better out there they've spent gajillions of dollars I mean I know the guy that actually ran this [ __ ] thing dude is as good as it can be for such a big it's Mission critical for them yeah it's a huge platform worldwide hundreds of millions of people so it's like look things are going to slip through the cracks right but ultimately I think they do an amazing job of filtering things I think I think the biggest thing that I've been complaining about this forever is how they Mis represent age verification right I don't I don't think there's any way effective way of really age verification for children and and and I think children actually change their age in order to access certain stuff and so that I think that's the biggest challenge and I don't think there's real

incentive at the company to actually make that better because they are selling a story about them actually raising the ages so that they can say that they're going to be making more money for the customers the customers will make more money I just don't think that's happening I think that that is the one thing that that bothers me about how they report things so I I think that's very true we talked a little bit of what was the company kid ID who is is trying to create some of that age verification it's it's a huge issue I mean I think I told you the story of how my kids completely figure out how to get around any sort of age verification they create their own email accounts with

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