TWIG #304 Supercell's Marketing Shakes Up while Web3 Shoots Back!

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 manage subscriptions and streamline Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games 304 where we read and distill all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to so here's what we have today a lot of good stuff Destiny Rises on mobile coming to mobile

Off the Grid gives web 3 gaming fans some hope we might actually be positive on something today so you know hang on and then another thing that we actually might be a little positive on is well some of us ozra so some of the folks that have developed Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes they've raised over $40 million for Western mobile RPG so we're going to dig into that so hello everyone I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at J Inferno and beta hat and today we have Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting let's cook Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting what up punks and it's just the three of us today so you're stuck and we have no banter nobody wants to talk about anything going on in the world just games no all right all right fine I'm going to get right to Schilling then Mishka had a chance to interview the scopely co CEO Javier F Ferrera right

kind of like a Spanish Ferrari yeah no he's yeah he's SP Spanish Ferrari I think is pretty good so a lot of good talk about Monopoly go and how they're thinking about the future of the company Mishka actually has another kind of big budget interview that is dropping next week and sign up to our newsletter and YouTube so that you can stay in touch with that one of our sponsors abser has a bunch of stuff going on so I wanted to do a quick sh for them their 17th annual apps lier performance index is out so what it does is it ranks the top Mobile Media sources according to Quality and quantity metrics across a a variety of slices so you can break it down by platform by Goo by category and it's a great way for anyone to go in and see what are the networks that are really working right now so go to apps.com to see the latest on that and then they had another announcement that is actually

pretty cool and Crest you might kind of like this because abser and meta have partnered up on a solution to help UA folks get better roaz insights on iOS users so abser is now supporting and validating meta's AEM which is aggregated event measurement with apps fers proprietary modeling in one unique single source of Truth their ssot so kind of in a nutshell this is probably going to help get better Raz an LTV out of iOS users as you use meta as a platform if applier is your MMP so you might even say that this is like fingerprinting a a little bit a little bit I'm not I'm not quite sure I didn't they didn't say that but that would be kind of how I see it so super interesting you have a puzzled look or no I have a correction though I I will do a correction I feel bad because every time mishka's off the podcast I have to throw shade at him like I think the last time we shate of him is about doing the

boondoggling and like what business is he actually conducting while he's doing all these boond doggles now I'm not correcting the fact that he does boond doggles constantly right but he is out there busting his ass doing what he does and getting the sponsors and getting these interviews and promoting The Constructor of fun so hats off to Mr Mishka kov for being the absolute Supreme bis Dev guy and doing what he does and I apologize for suggesting other was I also apologize for suggesting that he's getting smaller I'm totally kidding he's a [ __ ] he's a monster dude so him and jav are like you know battling it out for the best BMI right maybe they want to be exec or something but probably not but anyway I was just kidding Mishka you are looking massive you are a huge human being getting smaller anyway those are the two Corrections Mr Mishka come back to the

podcast oh that's awesome when I hug him I feel like I'm hugging the Incredible Hulk so hopefully that it's like a brick wall Javier's a big biker too I wonder if they should have done the podcast over over bike you remember that Jen oh that's true yeah yeah yeah I know he biked a lot yeah for sure he's fit yeah those guys are fit they're living the LA Dream dude out there him and yeah everybody all right so let's get into a few highlights going on um it's not a put if we don't mention what's going on with Google Play So as Google Play you know ruled that you know the app the Google Play Store is an illegal Monopoly and forcing it to open up Sarah Bond president of Xbox announced on LinkedIn of all places it was really interesting that that was the pr choice that players can start purchasing Xbox games from the Xbox app on Android devices starting next month assuming also that there's no pause for the Google appeal so this this was kind

of interesting so kind of effectively announcing the launch of their Mobile store question mark it was kind of weird how that was the the place for that and then one other thing that kind of links into that is Xbox cloud gaming will let you stream your own Games Starting in November so it's all kind of linked together they're poking the bear you know the Google might get split up and some of these lawsuits might be challenged you know if they get split up then they're kind of running their own thing and I don't know what are they game with this yeah nothing okay you have an app store where you can distribute your apps I mean maybe you save on the platform for you really that that can't be what this is about like what what do they feel like they were not getting access to beforehand that they get with an Appstore that's what I don't understand the challenge for me is that there isn't a lot of information about it that's why we probably don't have a great take because we don't really know what we're responding to so we'll see and then we'll come back back and and give you some more thoughts all

right I love teenage mut Ninja Turtles and so I was pretty excited to see that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is doing a partnership inside of ufn so they have kind of giving creators a toolkit where they can go and create Turtles experiences and you can do that now and the islands all go live on November 13th so I'm I'm curious to see if this is a new way for them to set themselves apart from the other ugc 3 Roblox Minecraft fortnite I'm going to make a brand of the three ugc companies because they are not metaverses I'm not going to use that word anymore and I called them the ugc 3 Chris you have a story yes and I actually just realized that I am missing this timing but anyway game freak basically the the makers of Pokemon confirmed there was a data breach but this was back in August so I thought it had may have something to do with the fact that Nintendo and Game Freak are suing the power world guys but it has nothing to do with that at all in Cur

2024 like some information was uncovered including some titles that are coming out the next Pokemon Games Etc and the good news here is it actually confirms the thesis that the nextg switch is going to be backwards compatible so they have a version of the next Pokemon game for both switch 2 as well as the original switch but other than that all this information about former employees and contractors was released and so they are uring that they will fix things and get things back on track but for me it just confirms things about the switch 2 which is good all right continue on more Xbox news all right so Alan Hartman is retiring after more than 30 years he was just in put in charge of Studios at Xbox last year and evidently rare boss Craig Duncan is being promoted to Xbox game studios chief

along with that news we also heard that 343 is being renamed again to Halo Studios so I guess they are focusing on Halo that once belov franchise that should make Phil happy right is Phil has isn't this what you've been saying like on Halo I I don't understand how rebranding the name to something that's more direct I mean 343 was pretty pretty Direct I just really confusing change yeah they weren't doing Halo either right like were they ever doing anything other than Halo no no that's what 343 is for is what do this tag but I think along with this announcement they announced that they are using the Unreal Engine as opposed to their own engine which I think actually could be good ironic well that's see it's questionable right because part of what makes Halo great is the field and the controls and all that stuff I mean I'm assuming it could replicated on unreal

but we'll see I would imagine it changed somewhat how the game is actually feels and stuff so but anyway I think going down real makes sense it's future proofs them and it it gives them more access to Talent right people that know on real but if they're only announcing this now I mean how long has the next Halo been in development for like when is this thing shipping like that the franchise is in desperate need of help well this seems like a reboot again right so basically start the clock today yeah that's when we're gonna see you're looking at three or four years three or four years realistically to next course that is insane the franchise cannot survive that long Phil Harrison managed I keep seeing Phil Harrison Phil senson manage the [ __ ] into the ground dude like I mean I mean it is like in the floor like dug in like [ __ ] on shoes dude it is a it was a train wreck right and so they it's like it's a rebirth right [ __ ] the Phoenix dude so we'll see we'll see well you know they could

always do trans media and have a TV show that could be wait oh oops God damn it why you guys throw shade on that TV show it wasn't that bad I like I I well all right moving on we I kind of liked it all right all right keep going then okay we have an announcement from third dimension AI it's a us-based generative AI startup it's raised $7 million in funding led by pH this the funds will be used to expand the team and improve the company's AI model the company aims to streamline the creation of large scale 3D environments from 2D images for use in video games so cool like really cool to see like capital is going into the very logical things that we all say AI is going to solve but if they're only just getting the capital now I assume it's going to be a long time before we see this in production like that's been that's always been the criticism is like we're still long out from integrating this into Supply chains but Capital capital's still flowing that's good good to see it

is a solvable problem $7 million feels like pocket change for these folks though doesn't it uh I mean you don't have to build the models like you can just do that at a product layer and plug in an API like maybe that's where the value is going to be I don't think we we know if the value is going to be in the core models or or in the software layer yet okay all right on less positive news jorgan Larson is leaving as CEO of stillfront Alexis Bonte who is friend of the podcast he was on the podcast once he's appointed interm CEO the board of directors is actively recruiting a new CEO for stillfront Group stillfront stock is down 50% year to date by the way the Market's up like 15 so oh my God and it's down 96 from its peak in 2021 oh man the punch was good there's no point in beating someone when they're down I mean hopefully Alexis and the new CEO can like find some footing and turn this ship around but this reminds me of

a company we used to call embracer right who is now three companies so they're coming for you Lars they're coming for you oh man anyway good luck Mr Bonte all right let's get into games there's there's quite a bit going on one is well recently we've been a little bit harsh on supercell and I was also critical of the squad Busters launch but the approach that they have to pre- Alphas that they're doing for future games is incredibly well done the community engagement the organization that they have and the one that I'm talking about is called project rise and maybe they don't know this but I'm somehow in their pre-alpha group I guess I answered all of their questions correctly and the way that they do it is really interesting the gameplay is unique I don't want to give away too many Secrets but there are I mean it's kind of public you can actually go they have a Twitter account for project rise you know basically it's this new kind of you know dungeon

crawling Rog likes with the supercell characters is kind of how this looks so I'll keep playing and let you know what I see but good on them to like hopefully do better at this and that way they know that they can soft lunch once their kpis are there all right so the next thing I want to touch on is Destiny Rising so yes yesterday Two October 14th was that yesterday two days ago there was an announcement in a trailer for Destiny rising from nety so Destiny Rising is a free-to-play mobile RPG shooter developed by Net's games and it's officially licensed from Bungie so it's set in the destiny universe but an alternate timeline I'm actually not a destiny player and I'm not super familiar with the IP I know Crest you are so you'll correct anything that I say that's dumb but unlike Destiny or destiny 2 you can pick from a variety of Destiny Hero characters instead of creating your own each character is going to have have unique abilities and

stories and you'll be able to access single player co-op and competitive multiplayer modes all in a mobile game and then the other thing you can do is play as firstperson or third person view with touchscreen controls or a controller sounds very like HD controller is there's going to be you know the typical campaign missions six player co-op strikes replayable PVE replayable PVE everything that many other companies aren't adding to their games because it's super expensive and PVP modes they have not announced anything about monetization so we don't know how it's going to monetize the first closed Alpha test is on November 1st in the US and Canada right closed Alpha in US and Canada which for mobile is interesting right um although we see a lot of that on PC games but for mobile that's interesting and then you can register to test this at n's website so

if you want to sign up and get in that's where you can go Crest I know you're a fan of this franchise what do you think about this finally getting to mobile I was a little bit skeptical at first because I wasn't really sure what this game was but I can't wait to try and play it I think really the best chance of success is to keep Bungie as far away from this as possible like that I mean that's my honest like hot take opinion it has to be paay to win otherwise it won't be successful and if it's cosmetic the the way the rest of Destiny is then it's not going to work again to be clear Destiny 2 is an expansion model I mean the the it has a cosmetic economy that drives some Revenue but the majority of it's related to selling expansions so I don't know what the monetization methodology on this is I don't know how much Bungie is involved but I think if they don't mess with nettis they could potentially build something pretty interesting here that could work but we need to get more information well n has found in a sense a formula with Diablo

Immortal right like they took another storied you know Western franchise and put their magic on it and their monetization right like we know from that game that there are massive massive whales in that game so hopefully they'll be able to do something similar with Destiny if not I don't know how you pay for PVE if you aren't you know doing in your words predatory monetization Phil how do you think they're going to breaking the dough on this I mean I think they're just going to run the Diablo mortal Playbook just as you said like that's what I don't understand Eric though is like what do you see as the comp for this in the west you got Call of Duty that's it everything else is [ __ ] Ubisoft was supposed to ship [ __ ] that didn't happen first descendant is missing on mobile I mean maybe you compet to what some Asian mobile MMOs but what do you do on the west side though right what what does this look like there's nothing look my gut tells me this is like an MMO Style monetization so it's going to be like a

total shark fin where they'll do really well at first get the downloads get the people in get people spending but then people will churn out but like look I'm discounting any success in Asia because I don't think that really is the measure of of what matters like if it does really well in China okay fine it's good for nettis but I don't think that's necessarily good for Bungie it's not a testimony to what's successful for Western Publishers you know what I'm saying so I'm not even talking about that I'm talking about like UC in the west is what I'm consider important and okay this has a better chance if netes is left to their own devices to try to figure out monetization and just don't let Bungie touch it you know that's all I gotta say you guys don't know how to monetize okay on mobile you just don't just stop just stop fair enough well so what I do think is different here that might help that point is it's a license so Diablo Immortal is codev just like wild Rush is codev so a license you get

approval rights but maybe not as much as you would if you were keving well I mean to be clear blizzard did everything in their power to [ __ ] up Diablo Immortal as well like I mean they didn't this is not a smooth process of like you let's like Kumbaya let's get this over to the Finish Line right like well the same thing on wild Rush with Riot I mean right right I mean that's the the true tension between the East and the West when you're trying to codep something it is the well we know our IP and our player and you know the Easter yeah so this is a license that might help it yes I don't actually I don't know the details on this one so I will do a little bit of work and figure out what the [ __ ] going on but from the initial feedback it's looking promising and that's because Bungie is not involved what do you think about this alternate timeline and the different char when I was watching the trailer

again like I'm not a fan of this but when I watched it I I had no grounding that this was Destiny as someone who you know hasn't seen anything I'm like this is Destiny it wasn't what I imagined that IP to be you're talking to the wrong guy when you talk about like lore and all that other stuff I don't really give a [ __ ] I play 500 hours of Destiny I I don't know what the [ __ ] is going on on the L I mean who cares right you know how many hours I've spent on [ __ ] World of Warcraft I don't know anything about what's happening in World of Warcraft dude it's a [ __ ] game like I'm not like studying lore you know I'm not like reading history this is [ __ ] right okay okay I just didn't even look like it visually I you know it looked like it was like more fantasy and I always think of Destiny more sci-fi okay all right fine you you that's fine wrong guy wrong guy got it all right let's move on to our next story which is off the the grid so is Off the Grid

going to be the first blockchain game to break through Phil probably will say yes what don't set me up for that yet all right well because it's La Tech week I actually was talking to quite a few people last night at this event and a lot of people have some interesting takes on where this is going in a positive way so first let me explain a little bit about what this game is if you're not familiar Off the Grid is a third person kind of extraction Royale shooter that's the mode that is launched right now there's going to be more modes coming so this is now launched into Early Access on PlayStation 5 Xbox series X and S and the epic game store remember because if it has any sort of crypto or blockchain uh steam is is not okay with that so you can launch on the epic game store Off the Grid touts itself as an extraction roale uh adding in some extraction shooter style mechanics which Phil loves uh dearly so

I wanted to touch on just a little bit on the marketing side and then Phil come in and talk about the game but what I thought was incredibly fascinating is there is already Partnerships with like you know the world's famous shooter streamers so ninja troud they have their own skins in the game and they have ad deals with lots of other big names this has been one of the most streamed games on Twitch in the recent days I think I when I checked snome it was number 18 on Mo watch games this was back on Sunday I should probably click in now that it's Wednesday it's dropped it's dropped really already yeah I should have clicked in okay so it also hit the top 12 most played games on the epic game store you know at the time beating out pubg League Rainbow Six Siege a lot of press on this this weekend too that's kind of what piqued my interest was a ton of Articles so the influencer campaign what I think

is really different about what they're doing is integrating influencers for the long run so not only is it rumored that people are spending probably $10 million plus on this influencer campaign at the Early Access stage now they are also working with the influencers long long term so because they'll have skins they get a REV share if their Skins are traded on the Chain later on and so they're incentivized to stick around do we know that's how the contracts are built I don't know that for a fact that is what I am hearing okay as we all know that we talk about things I don't know that for a fact okay but what I think that they have to do differently than what they did with apex's launch back in the day which was I think it was shroud or ninja I forget which one of them went in and played for a week and then like dropped off and then everyone was like oh they paid you so you don't authentically actually enjoy this game so I'm out and so I think that from a

marketing angle you have to figure out how you keep these influencers authentically invested in your experience now I don't know authentically invested is like I get a share of my revenue of my skins selling on the Chain however if they keep streaming that is good for the overall business so Phil tell me a little bit about what you see in the game itself or how it's working okay we have been [ __ ] on web 3 relentlessly since the start of this podcast and I don't I think there have been moments where we kind of like perk our ears up like okay what's happening what's going on web 3 has anything changed I think this is a moment that actually matters for web 3 and we should celebrate a little bit there are 50 million problems as always with web 3 they always love to Pat themselves on their back very very quickly will Pat themselves in the back that you know the revolution's been achieved when they've taken five inches they think they've taken a mile but the success here is that they shipped a game and and you're said it's this extraction Royale game they shipped this game on major platforms including epic game store they shipped it on consoles no one

really knew that there was blockchain in the game it's all custodial wallets you don't even interface with any of that [ __ ] you have to do age verification you don't have to do any of that right now there's no MTX in the game I think that's the other thing to really keep in mind and so let's just talk about the game economy because I think it's important to understand how these things are fit together so what will happen is that players will enter the game and they will try to extract these hex's in a battle royale style map and the hex's are across a bunch of different categories you can get arms legs guns you get a bunch of different things from these hex's and so the hex's will help you upgrade your weapons it'll help you upgrade your Loadout so I want to I want to get these hex's I want to extract with them and I want to get really cool things that come out of the hex's and then when I go back into the map I can call a load out and that Loadout can be that thing that I earned and so if I do really well in the round I can call my Loadout in and there's an escalating cost to the loadouts so the higher the Rarity of the things that are in your load out the more it costs in round and

there so there's more in round progression you need to do to be able to summon this to be able to call it now what's interesting here is that the items are not consumables they are durables they are permanent so the question here is if you're telling me that all the things that I extract from hex's are tradable assets and they're also durables what that means is that over time players are just going to extract more and more of these items and so if they're tradable and they've set all of are tradeable they're tradeable right now inside of the game for their in-game token their in-game currency right now if that is the case then overtime Supply is just going to increase and price will be driven down to zero this is a problem that every web 3 game faces and so do MMOs like Eric I'm sure you know this when you play World of Warcraft but the way that they prevent this is they have durability right so your item gets chipped you have to spend gold you have to drain resources or else it essentially just disappears because resources are automatically being Flo into the economy every time you slay them on monster it's an unlimited faucet and so they have

this problem immediately that I don't know how they're going to deal with and from what I understand they're going to charge an in-game currency that they have right now called guns you can only earn this ingame and that's how you buy things in the marketplace what they're going to do is they're probably going to have to say it's going to take x amount of guns to open a hex and so in that way they can raise the price of hex openings over time to essentially slow the introduction of new Supply onto the marketplace so the earnings per hour are probably going to decrease in this game over time like they just need better ways to like sync things out of the economy and they don't they don't have a great answer for this yet so there's a million economic problems the game is okay it's fine I guess it's you're right it's an extraction Royale and and they call it an extraction Royale it actually does some interesting things to the genre like this is what extraction shooter should be which is very simplified Loop easy to get in highly accessible like that stuff is interesting but it's just certainly not enough to carry a PSU curve for a long period of time I think that's fine so when I was talking to folks they said

that the way that you know the item exchange works is really similar to how players experience csgo or CS2 whatever you call that thing now I hate that they rebranded because I can it's like you know FC and FIFA I can never remember what the call CS2 apparently it work the marketplace works very similarly to how that game already works and so the idea there is that you know the blockchain is all in the background you know smart wallets are kind of in play here so that you're not you know burdening people with the friction of wallets if you play that other game cf2 then you already kind of get and understand how you are going to trade items it just so happens to be powered and live on the blockchain is that is that right do I have that kind of understanding correct or am I dumb I mean the big the big model in web 3 is like how are you going to get the next billion users onto web 3 that has been like their ongoing model and stuff like this I guess counts like they used to celebrate Reddit if you remember Reit Reddit integrated nfts and no one seemed to like kind of give a [ __ ] about that six months later so like again with web

3 it's always like okay you got distribution that was a huge problem you've always had people are transacting I bet there's a pretty high share of Dau who are engaging in this feature the game doesn't suck you know okay like what is your next growth cycle web 3 like what is the next step that you need to take to gain some some legitimization you know I think this is something I just don't know what the next step after this is because this isn't going to last for a long time is it just smart wallets like if they could get that technology into more games where it's is that when the game like makes the wallet for you or you don't have to have this whole thing where the at the very beginning you have to set up an account and cry because it's the hardest thing ever to me that's what it you know is going to be the next thing that unlocks everything but I I guess my question is when I read about this game it doesn't feel like a traditional web 3 game it feels like web 2.5 because right now there is none of that kind of complexity integrated into

the experience I think that's fine I mean the other thing here is that it's actually a normal team I just there's just a lot of I I love web 3 it's a lot of my clients I think they're trying to do the right things but it's very hard to ship a AAA game if you've never done that before and like having just an experienced team who's done that before is a huge W in your category and that's sort of like the underlying crypto politics here is that these platforms are subsidizing the cost of this right now like they're usually investors they've given Capital so like this is also an artificial Supply based on you know these chains which are Waring right now like they've subsidized a heavy part of this project yeah I I would imagine that the chains also want to help with marketing they also want to you know pump money in in different ways and so maybe it's actually kind of like a a built-in investor I don't know CR what are your thoughts on this stuff this feels like a really well done pseudo web 3 game right and clearly they spent a gajillion dollars on marketing this game

I mean they're like all in right and I played the game and the game's not bad you know it's like it is like you said it is a game Gamers game type thing so this is a good shot on goal we'll see what happens I'm actually working on doing a profile of this for next week so maybe I'll have a little bit more insights then but yeah let's see what happens but all right again this is all about retention you know it's all about keeping people playing you know and so maybe they can attract a certain audience that's really into this type of I guess what's the vend diagram of like people that really love extraction Shooters and that people that want to be trading you know items in a game for real money type thing you know like let's see if they can find that Niche you know I think the hardest thing in the research that I've done in the space is a lot of traditional gamers are allergic to these kinds of you know crypto components now when it's blatant like when it's blatant old school nft

that's where players are like oo no I'm not going to touch it because I'm arguing with the you know 1849 speculators panning for gold but when you get into a model like this that might be a little bit more traditional to them of what they see in other games maybe that's going to be the the bridge to getting people to be okay with it but people didn't freak out this time no they they didn't freak out this time they freaked out for ubisoft's courts remember that the little serial codes that were going to go on the Rainbow Six helmet like the most barebones implementation they rioted against and here like I think there's a thing with new IP and with new companies where they just they don't even know the medicine is coming you know and like the pill just goes down and then they just they can't even complain about it you know it's like a kid who's getting a shot like the needle just happens and then they stop stop complaining well it's also not there yet right like you don't have to sign in with a wallet you don't have to do those things right off the bat and you have the most influential influencers in the world saying it's

okay I think that's another thing I mean I don't I haven't watched their videos to know how much they talk or don't talk about any of those components but unless you're a nerd like us would you even have known that this is a web three game where there's crypto behind the scenes or blockchain behind the scenes probably maybe that's what's different this time you can't even buy the currency right yep you can't buy the token that's a huge part of this you're not seeing the web 3 friction yet correct and you can't cash out yet cuz remember that's also your cash out opportunities you exchange guns for cash the way the game is set up right now like any technology would have worked for this right this said didn't have to be blockchain correct no this could Market but but see here's the thing though like who cares like it's never been about can can we deliver something that only this technology can deliver I mean you could like we're just talking about engines any deler graphics sorry that statement is not accurate that statement is not I want listen to Nico waxing [ __ ] about this for years that this is the only way that you're going to be able to trade real

life items D don't [ __ ] revise history here this was like mean I never maintained that I never maintain I know but I'm not say you may have not have but that is not the argument that these guys were making at the back in the day I [ __ ] sat there for almost an hour and a half listening to this [ __ ] for like f for two years straight you know I love Nico but Jesus you know this is not the promise that was the promise I'm sorry right sorry who's Nico who's n doesn't matter he's a big craft guy oh okay you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because in today's mature Market you need every Edge to be successful rather than spending those precious company dollars on building game Tech focus on building your game and shipping it get into your players hands faster and grow your community heroic Labs is Battle tested partner and friend of the podcast their Tech enables you to be flexible creative

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insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app app sler where your app's potential meets performance so tell me tell me about azra games one of the biggest web three raises of all time and why you like it please it's so funny I constantly getting feedback that I'm negative about all new things so I'm trying to change my ways and see get the positive spin on things right okay so here's the thing here's the thing you don't have enough Venture takes like all your takes are like their hedge fund takes they're like Diablo is going to sell like three or 3.1 million like I think that's really important but like give me a crazy moonshot like Enzo like jump on this train with me jump jump on like a crazy moonshot that you believe that's the that's the Sims competitor right like Trump trump on a crazy train with me you know I'm on board with that electric heart let's go just pick something crazy all right so Against All Odds azra Games

has raised 42.7 million for project Legends a pseudo web 3 game Run by Mark ortero who is a lead on Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes well sort of a lead more on that later in an interview with gamesbeat Otero said the company's energy is creating its RPG are focus on providing thrilling gameplay visceral combat and immersive storylines and that he's going to build great games first and then web 3 so this is not really a web 3 game this is actually very similar to what we were talking about before right he's building a game and then adding web three later well that's gonna work that always works yes tack it on after the fact tack on monetization after the fact good idea so this article literally was kind of like an opus you know it was pretty insane PR and it's may be worth a read as everything you can do in order to like

sell your your vision of what things are to come but in essence this is basically I think is genin impact a western genin impact with dark fantasy right I mean that's what it it comes down to and so in some ways it makes sense to me from a product perspective so my quick take first of all there are absolutely a million stories about ooto right he is evidently an amazing salesperson but according to a Reddit and I would not go down this deep Rabbit Hole of Reddit but he's a tyrant and a micromanager so that's what and that's the nice version just saying okay but you know given how hard it is to get a game to Market you might have to be a tyrant and a micromanager but what's kind of crazy is that after his experience at Capital games in Sacramento for EA and and launching Star Wars he was at a [ __ ] hedge fund for six years and anyway the the story I've heard a million times about this guy is that he was basically responsible for the launch of galaxy of Heroes that is

true but not really the long-term success of it right like he left like literally when the game launched so it's like there's lots of stories behind this and I'm sure people out there that were part of it will be screaming bloody murder right now trying to like you know wanting to tell their Tale But to be clear the gay was really Bare Bones and really buggy as [ __ ] when it first launched cuz I was actually playing this and they fixed the game added a lot of the features that they were planning on after the fact and this whole development process I remember at the time because I was covering EA and covering mobile and this was their big bet it was a [ __ ] disaster the whole process was an absolute train wreck from beginning to end they were Drop Shipping [ __ ] dozens of people into Sacramento to get this thing out on time it was a nightmare it was a nightmare from what I heard right so the process was not smooth was not good having said all this and this is where Philip black is going to crucify me I think he's making a western version of genin right which I

don't think is a bad idea like if I were to make a shot on goal with 70 million [ __ ] dollars that's what I might make right you know this is not a web three game I don't care really what he says you can't really bolt web three in after the fact I think they likely pivoted out of web 3 and are focusing on web two and and but they just I don't know have to capitulate to existing early investors I don't [ __ ] know dude but the only issues I see with the game is that the art style is somewhat generic Dark Fantasy I would have preferred a more broad appe heal like stylized you know fantasy but whatever that's just my taste let's see but I think the really important thing that they've done that puts with Western sensibilities is that they are making collection as the core like mechanic I mean the gameplay is important but the collection and the use of different characters for different situations is like the core part of the gameplay Loop if this is implemented well and they really have an aggressive like gotcha upgrade Evo monetization it

could be an interesting shot on goal right from an independent team but this is this is what I'm thinking what do you think Mr Philip black first of all it's just great to see you excited about a project again but what I would point to is like look at look at the revenue from the games that have come out that have been this really high Capital cost intensive 3D action RPG so you think about genin even if you went back to third impact if you went even to included rail star future fight came out a really long time ago but was like a 3D action adventure weathering waves just came out just came out solo leveling a rise just came out Warframe came out recently and if you look at how these games have performed the downward Arrow has been extremely sharp for all of them despite all of these games coming out the cumulative revenue between all of them has barely moved barely moved when you add all of these games together they're just compensating for one another and that to me is a huge huge concern a huge concern especially if you're trying to scale a

genin game in the west like you got to remember mihoyo has 3,000 employees last I heard Maybe I'm Wrong in that specific number they've spent nine figures on marketing these games another nine figures in development cost and so I have a hard time imagining you're going to set that up with venture capital from a completely unknown studio and be able to match that Factory and then chase after a downward Arrow so that seems bad to me I'll counter that over you let me counter all right you're right you're absolutely right fa points good points good points having said that like we haven't seen a western style game out of all this this is all anime shite right that that caters to a certain audience right so perhaps with a different theme you could attract a bigger audience or in theory hopefully attract some of the turn-based RPG guys which I think is what he's talking about doing in this in this insane press release I will concede

though that the amount of bodies that they put at these games is insane right so like they it's going be really hard for them to replicate the depth and the quality and they still don't have any money for marketing right so they still have to get a publisher that can actually get this game to Market so there's a lot of challenges ahead but I don't think it's a Bad Bet for a well- capitalized group I think it's a better bet for a company that is more established that wants to like have this team as part of it but it shouldn't be done again none of this [ __ ] should be done by VCS like none of these Investments make any sense for VCS at all like this should be a this should be a publisher this should be Crafton this should be netes net marble someone investing this money to build this game so that they have it as part of their pipeline so that they can throw gajillions of dollars into it if it works so I I'll give with you there too uh but we'll see you know we'll see I I I I second your take on your publisher

take I also think that your point about the IP is really interesting if you think back to like Conan the Barbarian or Dark Fantasy there isn't a lot of that theme being applied right now and so I don't know if that is going to grow the audience but perhaps it can capture share from a pretty big pie like this is where I mean we talk about this all the time this is where you know monetization happen happens and this is our favorite form of monetization the other thing that we don't see when we look at these games is the revenue that's on console and PC and the web shops and so what we might not have that insight into is that opportunity that isn't just the mobile opportunity we have okay yeah but then then we're talking about insane levels of money right like it's not just an easy Port this is mobile first and then console later is what he said in the article oh he did say that one okay yeah just but the market he's competing in like that's their skew plan right like they are not mobile first they are

distributed across platform right all right so one last Quick story so our friend Neil long from mobile gamer. piz I love his Friday article so he had an article around what scopely is lining up their next big Mega deal and so it's time to play guess who scopely is buying all right so here's the story scopely cro Tim O'Brien spoke at his subscriber only Q&A at variety entertainment technology Summit and so Neil actually either was there but he I don't know transcribed the event so good job Neil he said that scopely is lining up a mega deal acquisition for 20125 I hope that we announce at least one Mega deal Tim says when I say mega deal I mean a scaled Global franchise doing hopefully at least a billion dollars in Revenue so when you hear that for fun for fun

went into our friends at sensor Tower pulled up the top 20 mobile Publishers worldwide making a billion dollar in app store you know App Store Revenue so this is not web shop this is not ads which when you add that that could be a little bit different but you know for fun I just did this so technically there are 12 Publishers over a billion kind of 13ish you know there's a couple that are close of which scop is one so so now we're at 11 so three of them are Chinese companies 10 cetes and Mi hoyo all right so eight are viable then you have Activision Blizzard and take two and I didn't really think those were in play so now you're at six and so here are the six playx supercell Dream Roblox moonactive plka and you know the last one it's it's a close one um pixel United which owns Big Fish though they're like 950 million so some folks might also say well what about H or voodooo I don't really think scopi is like admon

first I think they're really looking at more in at purchase as sort of their revenue so I'm not really counting those guys I think for us to kind of get a read on this we should you know track Tim's travel is he going to Israel or turkey or Finland right like you know you know where is he going I don't really think there's a a reason for him them to buy coin master so if I had to bet my bet would be dream since scop Le doesn't really have a big puzzle game so and they have Royal Kingdom that's coming out in in addition to that I have no idea if this is a potential but that would be my bet chis what do you think who's your bet uh actually I would put Niantic on this list as well because they're desperate for an exit right they've been like oh puttering along for a while so I put that there they number 18 on interesting you think and they're looking for an out oh God they've been looking for out for years dude like they've had this one success and never

been able to replicate it since so they're just sitting on yeah tons of valuation and yeah anyway whatever all right I think dreams make sense playrix but I think playrix is too busy cashing checks I don't think they give a [ __ ] I don't think they want an exit no offense but hom and Voodoo I would actually kind of think this is too low brow for Javier and Walter I don't think leave them alone I love them love H leave them alone man look I love well you know whatever I love those guys but whatever anyway moving on so fun plus is like a totally different org like Chinese developers completely different genres I don't know if Andy and Chris fvix are for sale but like that makes a lot of sense for a big big you know add-on to the the Saudi Empire the other option is going after PC console business and I haven't looked at this in a long time so I'm not even going to speculate there but that would make sense as an extension to the existing strategy not really scope's wheelhouse

ridly Walter and hiier but like ultimately this makes sense for them to expand the Empire that they're trying to build within the kingdom yeah fun plus makes sense and the ones you mentioned yeah everything else yeah Moon active doesn't make any sense yeah Roblox is way too big super cell no I'm just kidding like that's yeah there's no way that's going to happen we know that just like Zinga scopely is looking to expand crossplatform well how's that God I mean when you check in at Star Wars Hunters I mean no I mean they have crossplatform they have stumble guys right that's been their big win is they put it on Xbox remember and it's on Steam I never thought I would see the day with scopely running with an HD game I just don't see Javier and Walter having the patience or at least I I didn't think they'd have the patience that you have to endure with the triaa game there's just a lot more soul searching I think you have to do it's a more unclear the organizations are much bigger accountability is much

harder to drive like it's a lot of things that I think is really built scopely but then again like they let Monopoly go for a really long time and I think one of the things that I recommend people listen to is mishka's interview that just came out with Javier where he talks about this where he talks about the fact that they kept funding the team for so long and under what conditions he would fund a team for so I guess what I'm curious about is why would you announce this why would you say you're going to go out and buy a company for a billion dollars what's the strategy here what does this do what's the pr Strat because there's there's always a PR strategy with scle and I mean that in the in the most utmost respect to them yeah well and and by the way just to clarify they did say a billion dollar franchise not necessarily a company oh oh interesting if you want to get technical um I mean I went to company because I don't really know that many billion dollar franchises but I think we're pretty sure we all know this that they are really investing in Triple A and they are doing things in AAA from scratch not just mobile anymore and so I

think that could be a place for them to look like they their though that seems dumb like what what are they going to do because the whole point of a firm is to enhance the capital that it's given multiply it make it more productive and I don't know if scopely has that ability at for a tripl game what is their refinement problem the scopely OS as Havier likes to tell us great branding play but like how does the scopely OS make aleaa games better than an alternative trip publisher I don't I don't understand why this isn't their specialty okay let me let me speculate here a little bit I don't think Saudi Arabia and The Savvy group give a [ __ ] about profitability they want to build right like it's a different mindset than scopely right fundamentally in my humble opinion so they will make investments that don't make a lot of ss from their pragmatic mindset about building and and expanding and profitably right so in that sense they have a much broader

mandate than they had before and so this may lead them to doing different types of deals that may not make as much sense why wouldn't you double down on social so first all I I don't understand the genre diversification thesis I've seen this come up a lot I don't think those coefficients move that differently like do we really see that much Divergence in terms of genre performance are you really is that really an effective way to buy insurance is one thing that I find questionable like those things have to move in opposite directions for those really to be Hedges and I think a lot of the times they move in the same space so I doubt the genre diversification thesis but I don't understand why they wouldn't double down on Monopoly go like why not go out and buy a Social Casino company and just like crank on this thing like this this feels like the most obvious play like you look at these charts I I mean it's unreal what happened and this you know unfortunately this doesn't have the best display but Monopoly goes 80% of their revenue it just completely took over their portfolio like looking at the this is before Monopoly go this is after Monopoly go in terms of Revenue it's like it's just unreal yeah that's the one question I wish he had asked them is like the rest of their

portfolio is kind of crap right now it's like they let it all go I mean it Monopoly go is so big that it does overshadow Star Trek or know stumble guys and those the Run rates for these new other games are just really low right now and I know a lot of it's Web Store Etc I know they'll they'll throw that back but like ultimately it's not looking that good they did he did quote the stumble guys Ma I don't know if he that in Misha's interview I think he said it was 40 million ma which is crazy which is what I I suspected that it was really high based on some numbers that I had heard on their ads their ads Revenue per month is Roblox 75 million not it's way more than that Ma oh got it got it it da I think is around 70 million Ma I think is around 330 360 maybe even 390 so somewhere in there well no I just the only reason I bring that up is tumble guys is very young itself I don't know it just kind of kind of thinking about that in comparison but so tell me about you don't believe in genre

diversification I think the argument that's being sold is that this is a hedge in your portfolio so like if one of the genres go south you can really just bet on games rather than betting on any particular genre and I think scop by the way has always had a diverse portfolio of genres which is something that's really unique to the company but what I would argue is like I think that's a false way to look at genre diversification I wouldn't do it for that reason because I don't think the returns are uncorrelated with one another I think they're highly correlated so you're not you're not getting good diversification it's not an effective form of insurance so you don't like my idea that they're they would buy dream for puzzle because they don't really have puzzle even though puzzle is one of the strongest monetizing genres I I think they should buy whoever they feel like integrates in the scopely OS that they can leverage for the most amount of output everything is about Monopoly go everything needs to be a monopoly go I would have the the [ __ ] offices would be Mr money bags Mr the penny money bags guy i' have dice rolls everywhere I mean it really needs to be I mean this game just blows away

everything a small percent this is their Candy Crush this is their candy cr can ride this thing for 20 years I'm gonna reiterate like I understand what you're saying from a product and a profitability perspective like the double double double double triple trip trip trip down right but that's just not the strategy that they're going after with Savvy like the Saudis want to you know build up all kinds of different things within the kingdom that's what they're going to be optimizing against is trying to figure out ways of getting people working in Riad which is a [ __ ] you know hell hole Jesus Jesus I wish you were here for the savy interview I I listen talk about it said you up you have street cred you said you grew up there you have street cred I grew up yeah but it was a long time ago obviously but I was back in a while a while ago but like there's nothing to do in RI dude you don't want to live in RI and nothing has changed everything's kind of stays the same there anyway I'll speak out of ignorance because I haven't been there in a long time but I hear

from these from people that are actually going there it's not a fun place to be Dubai yes even Abu Dhabi but not [ __ ] Rian anyway again their strategy is completely unique to them in what they're trying to accomplish for Prince Muhammad so it's like that that it's a completely different calculus right now and so we'll see how that manifests itself but buying companies that actually can operate in Saudi and stuff will be also a consideration and expanding them Beyond mobile would be important too okay by the way hot off the presses supercells first ever Chief marketing officer departs so someone what yeah well it's finally public yeah this is finally public we knew about this months ago I think so someone's paying for this squad Buster debacle right so like amount of money that they spent on marketing for this game I mean I I don't know but anyway she she's gone she joined like only a year ago right like in a big

shakeup and adding a few new execs to the to the roster this was part about the remaking of supercell and to create this new organization and the CEOs like but you know throwing all these big you know plans out there and so they hired this big CMO from King and she's gone after a year so there we go well yeah I I I think when we heard she was gone after six months is when it's interesting that it's now finally public after so long I'll have a piece out on pre-registrations I just I was enraged last episode having to listen to this pre-registration like I the all the is so wrong I no no no no we're we're going to talk about pre-registrations soon okay well fine I mean there were 40 million and there were a lot of them from all the games NOP we can we can we can talk about it later well fine well then prepare your argument and I would like to see it so that I can make sure give me some time to respond though my friend okay we'll

we'll do all right everybody thank you for hanging in there with us we'll see you next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fun.com slack and apply to join join the games industry 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