TWIG #305 Music Stops at Netflix Games as Hell's Bells Ring for AA Games

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games number 305 where we read and distill all the weekly game industry news so you don't have to here's what we're talking about today uh sorry we got to talk about Netflix because there were some massive changes there and uh we have takes although Crest isn't here and so it might be a different takes well you know what he would say anyway uh is is double A Dead uh so that's one of the topics uh Age of Empires launches but it may might not be the launch that you expected and then Delta Force also has some stuff and I oh before we were talking Phil like teased like his POV on this and it wasn't what I expected so I can't wait to get there so let's make sure we get there hi everyone I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at jadden Inferno and beta hat and today we have of course the Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting L's Co

chef of deconstructor of fun uh Mishka katoff oh thank you thank you you know what area code 305 is no Miami so this episode's about to be funny we better talk about crypto then is that a joke no it's true 305 this is episode 305 area code 305 is Miami okay dad jokes Jad jokes let's move on let's move on you're not the funny one my friend so I didn't expect it from you uh Adam teler the product guy welcome Hey in the six in the [Laughter] 406 oh geeez go oh you're killing me this morning okay so uh cres and Laura both aren't here um but I am going to just do a quick recap uh with the three of us were at games Forum SF on Tuesday uh we had the best gig which is a panel that was going on at the end of the day and it was really designed for us to what go to all the panels and then dish

on what we heard um for the rest of the panels it was was it was pretty fun we had a special guest Matt Harris who is VP a product for ingame ads at Activision Blizzard media and this guy is this guy is legit he did war in the trenches at Tapjoy he was at uh Google he was at meta this guy is an ad guy and I think he's going to go to battle with John Wright for the new spirit animal for the deconstructor of fun Community he like he's the nicest guy uh he was super funny he was super informative and you wouldn't expect like this authenticity from an ad guy um but yeah so thank you Matt for joining us and then JK Joseph Kim actually uh was there and so I invited him up on stage for like a mini doof reunion and of course Chris and he got into a little bit of fight about double A versus AAA which we will actually talk about later and then when Crest comes back he can he can fill it so thanks to the games Forum folks

for for having us it was uh fun to be together in person on stage Chris looks so happy in that photo that you shared yes grumpy where where was the event where like it was in San Francisco but where marott Marquee uh how dangerous area is that it like when we talking about streets like is it six fifth fourth where are we it was okay it was by the mels Diner uh it it was okay you know it's San Francisco so yeah you know a lot of Whos it would you know uh the self-driving cars if you haven't seen them it's pretty creepy to watch people get into a car when no driver and you know they go around I downloaded the app but I didn't get a chance to use it because I'm not often in San Francisco but all right so let's do a little Shilling um it was also La Tech week last week and I did uh a bunch you know because it's La there I did a bunch of conferences I got to see the Exel team

and so they actually just released their uh latest uh report so in that report their summer report they talk a lot about the influencer industry so just calling out a quick blurb from them the influencer industry is booming projected to be worth 24 billion this year and Gamers rely on influencers for entertainment and game recommendations I think we all know that pretty pretty intimately and so there are some stats and they talk a little bit about Indie Games in there as well so uh go to their website let's see ex. prtx just go to their website and download it I'm sure you can all figure it out uh thanks to them they're they're doing a lot of great work in pulling stats together I think the next one is going to be really really mobile focused I I gave I I gave Berkeley some feedback I'm like dude just go deep on mobile please get me that data live Ops 24 billion for uh for influencers where where's where's the money at oh you know where it is

influencers well uh actually yeah we're in this weird zone of like we're not quite pressed we're not quite influencers we're sort of Consultants yeah we we need to call ourselves I'm not a consultant you guys do your own yeah say Ad Consulting for like three years straight okay sry got rid of that you got hired by your client got actually hired it's good so so uh so let's let's not let's not bomb on Consultants anyway so I got a couple of shills as well uh you've heard of heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because you need every Edge to be successful in today's market heroic Labs gam stack is built like a break house you got the Nama their back-end game server hero their game development framework Satori their liveop service and last but not least heroic cloud to provide massive

scalability heroic Labs is a battle tested partner and their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scale for Success focus on your game avoid Tech risks grow your product with scalable live Ops and save a big chunk of cheese all with heroic Labs we got a a uh blog write up transmedia triumphs and traps so that was written by editor Kate haly uh check that one out on on deconstructor fund blog and that blog post is based on my interview with Peter Leven who's the the founder uh co-founder and managing director of Griffin gaming fund so la based gaming fund biggest in the world 1 billion um is the uh size of the fund so we had a fun recording with with Peter uh in the sense that there were questions of course it's a financial institution a big financial institution so they Al always want to see the questions in advance at ET Etc and I kind of rode

everything but it kind of got like missed somehow so he came totally unprepared he was like are there any questions I'm like no I think we're gonna wing it and so he was jetl and it was early morning in Helsinki and I think the uh what do you guys think do you did you have chance to check out yeah Pro probably your second best podcast this year honestly 100% unscripted because he was like I never saw any any questions and uh and so it was really fun to record because there were no questions and it was just fun to ask somebody who's in LA we talked a lot about the IPS and and he's such an OG like he's been he's been in the industry forever and worked not only with gaming media but with games as well as the the Hollywood studio so it's it's a it's a pretty fun fun uh interaction so check that one out and if you're coming in for slush we have couple of spots left for Onsite recording in that same Studio we got of course Moritz uh Jen's new friend I got the photo he sent me a selfie so you're being

he is so lovely uh and he came up like before and he was like Jen oh my God and I was like I felt so cool I felt validated in my life that Mor recognized me and came up and gave me a big hug and sent me Mishka selfie yeah so moris is coming in on the podcast uh he cannot bring his baby on the podcast he asked Dad uh and then uh and then we got Kim Nordstrom coming in on a podcast to talk about up down up he has an audiobook coming out has more interview he especially brought in more female voice to his updated version so we're going to talk about the book for the first time on this podcast of course I've been traveling with a book I lost the book then I had to get the uh the PDF and then I found the book so I have like multiple of these books I got the signed version the non-signed version the the uh the the what anyways so he's coming on the podcast I'm really excited about both of those but if you want to come in on the podcast DM me either on slack or LinkedIn uh I have only two spots left

so let me know uh I will choose out of those the are the most interesting ones I tried to get a princess a legit princess uh that did not happen so now now I'm trying to get a Founder of one of the biggest companies I can't name it but uh hopefully I'll I'll get those so then will be one one uh one one spot left anyways slush if you're coming podcast let's do it awesome um I see you also wrote a blog post about the four reasons y CMOS get fired and thank you again for writing a [ __ ] marketing post and not talking to me about it this this post is not out it's a it's you have it in on your table if you want to add any comments the the post next week is going to be uh four reasons why CMOS get fired Jen is going to leave her comments on it and then it's going to come out so if you're not subscribing to the newsletter please do you'll find out why Cosmos get fired I like how you're the marketing expert now it's pretty funny yeah it's not you're

really good at it yeah it's not written by me but okay all right okay all right so let's get into some of the headlines um a new report from denu reveals that the value of the gaming industry has reached 184 billion this is typically around the same amount that I see from our friends at newu and and some of the other sources uh what was interesting is some of the other facts that they had in here so the next thing they talk about was that this 184 4 billion surpasses the combined value of both the music industry and the film Industries and so we've always been saying this for a long time you know music is like 28 billion and film is kind of billion the word film is doing a lot of work there like there's a lot of things around film like DVD sales that usually aren't included in this figure which we repeat back to people over and over again to justify our own self-importance of like how valuable the gaming industry in like do you remember how many times like we I feel like everyone in the gaming industry can recite this fact that we're worth more more worth more than film and

music yeah it's awesome um and Phil DVDs sales like that's a thing we we do those still sure but there's streaming rights there's a lot of things that come after like the theatrical release that that generate Revenue that sometimes is not included in that number we like to quote okay fair point I think but still like if it's 33 billion versus 184 feels feels kind of bigger feels kind of bigger um so a couple of the other points were interesting U Boomers Unite the average age of a gamer has gone up from 33 years to 37 years right like I mean but I love this I love that um I was in a a lifter in Uber and the driver was a uh a grandma literally a grandma she's showing me pictures of her kids and she's like you know what do you do and I'm like I do video game marketing she's like I don't play any games and she's like well what are you do what games are you playing I'm like we're all match she's like girl what level are you on I'm on level n 9,000

and I thought I I'm like wait I thought you said you're not a gamer um and so that's just the world that we live in is you know grandmas are now like the biggest cohort of Gamers out there uh the last point in this is transm Media rules um you know cres isn't here so I can say trans media 10 times today over half feel favorable about entertainment franchises expanding into gaming so that was uh fun of course we we love to see our IPS in there half that's all you could get was 50 1% of people to say they feel favorable and this is about entertainment franchises expanding into gaming not gaming going into entertainment which I think I'd also point out but like Jesus I mean I think Congress has a higher approval rating than 51% I mean oh I would I don't think so okay so uh next uh our friends at Tik Tok have a uh a brand new feature so it's called Tik Tock live Ops program it's just kicked off and launched it's designed to help mobile game Publishers

sustain engagement and retention through customized support for post-launch activities uh the platform has powered 102 live Ops campaigns already and it represents a remarkable nine times growth compared to 2023 so the program supports in game events seasonal updates content refreshes that keep player engaged um cool so very excited to see more kind of in-game behavior and AD units designed to do that that so if you're interested go to Tik Tok uh for Business website to learn more and you sign up I think it's a program that you really have to work with them on um Mishka you you you actually gave me this one because you're you're like tight with those guys girls girls and and guys so so we tried to We were supposed to do a podcast about this yesterday uh but but it didn't work out for the client so it's a big client that would be talking about in examples because this I find this very interesting uh just because you know the live Ops is the name of the game now on mobile and so I I

specifically wanted to have Tik Tok on a podcast but not just Tik Tok also their client so we can actually hear about the cases and how it works because it's not fully clear how how they do this like how do how does how you know how is this any different than your normal marketing uh like what's the other time with uh with the liveops but I to my understanding they do tie in their creator economy and then of course ugc ads are very powerful so so there's that component but um hopefully we can get the recording done next week and we'll publish this as soon as possible it's a big client so it will be an interesting story on how to leverage Tik Tok for your liveops and as a as a media channel uh I think it's a very smart strategy to focus on liveops because not so many you know folks are launching big games anymore on on on mobile but everybody's doing live Ops and and launching events and pushing their products up so smart strategy yeah it's a version of retargeting which

can be successful s for certain games um depends on the hooks that they have and how they're doing it um so yeah let's let's I'd love to hear more from them 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 flyer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing effort 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 Adam let's talk a little bit about Apple another platform that supports creators yes yes um there's been a rumor posted by 9 to5 Mac that apple is working on a new game gaming focused app

which will combine game center and app store together so think like Xbox or PlayStation's app games from the App Store and apple arcade would be combined together within this app fairly similar to the App Store but to channel in our inner Crest Phil can you please do our best Crest interpretation I I want to be crystal clear crystal clear I call this a [ __ ] year ago they should have been doing this [ __ ] they should been do this from the [ __ ] launch of the App Store I don't know how they miss this now too late too [ __ ] late Apple stop it just stop it yeah those guys are gangsters this what happens when you leave the podcast get roasted I noticed my god I've noticed in my in my real life I I have cisms now cuz I hear him so much in my head and I'm like everybody just stop it I'm like oh my God oh my God I'm picking it up just the super cynical voice voice in the back of your head I still have it I still have

it as I walk around yeah okay let's get to the next one that I'm sure Crest will be screaming from his San Francisco home on um Netflix has shut down its AAA team blue gaming studio it's G it's about time that was a good one that was a good one Jen this is the big the music has stopped at Netflix sadly and I know we call this Chris you called this many times in the Pod and Crest you'll do your victory dance next week but uh I'm not going to dance on this grave it's still sad that the day has finally come and lots of great people have been let go um and I'm G to butcher the name but still like this is including chooni is that how you say his name hopefully um who's the ex executive producer on OverWatch and apparently was working on Netflix's triaa PVP shooter so um I've also heard there's been additional impacts to kind of Gaming game Studio leadership around Netflix so

this is all just generally sad news and um signals that the music is stopping at Netflix so this is on the back of Netflix saying in January that games were doing better than ever it tripled engagement in the last year which I think Phil you ripped apart because we didn't understand what the Baseline was there uh so we don't know and I'm sure Crest will rip this story in when he gets back but I think the sad takeaway that I'm reminded of here is that median Tech Giants are experimenting with gaming but you should not trust a plan with blank checks or a long hockey stick be wary of joining companies that gaming is an experiment on projects with long payback Windows especially outside of the the the company's core competency and core Mission and I think triaa and in this case what was rumored to be new IP as well in an IP based company patience in a AAA business will be finite and even last uh week we were talking or sorry two weeks ago we're

talking about toxic positivity conviction in the game is going to be wavering throughout and if you're in these companies that you're building a new IP you've got this long hockey stick of of Promise patience in a AAA business will just be finite with that extremely effective upward Management on those long payback windows so in general this is definitely a sad thing I think the experiment really only lasted two years with the leadership here starting at Netflix only in October 20 22 uh MCO you got some notes Here well yeah well first thing uh I think you you give a fair warning but I do have to say I've seen some of these comp packages once you see that Netflix comp package it just grab the cheese like and SE grab that dough that's what I say like it's gonna be a two years but it's gonna be a a fun ride so so uh it's I'm I'm happy that at least they got paid most of them so um it was a it was a good Endeavor most likely finally to uh to attempt to build

a AAA shooter with Netflix now um before this like I mean this is like textbook this is pretty much what I what I wrote in in June on on the uh the on the blog Netflix games second season so there's new Bost to that jointed alline tascan probably butchering the name I'm sorry all alline um three months later just like with every executive you give three months where you just look at things you write the names on the wall and then you start executing 3 months after and now we're seeing those decisions so tripa shudio sh shutting down leadership is changing um it all makes sense I mean it did not make sense that Netflix was doing a AAA shooter Allen took a look at it looked looked at it for three months and be like yeah it does not make sense so that's being cut down uh I think kind of like projecting going a little bit forward I think there will be more of these type of changes like we know thepe the studios that they've acquired their internal development those not all of them have

released like unfortunately the ones in Finland that have been running under Netflix for what a little bit over 2 years they acquired next games uh and then they set up their own Studio here Netflix Game studio so they're basically in the same building but they're called just the different Studios like you know uh I think they would need to execute on on whatever they're doing and hopefully they will but it's kind of difficult when we're seeing the traction that these Netflix games are are having and so that sets kind of like the next wave of like what's going to happen to these internal Studios they're going to execute on a strategy that was set by a previous head of games that is not anymore there and so uh I would be you know weary about that uh and um hopefully they are able to to win the favor and and stay alive but you know in my prediction like I I wrote it down is is that we're going to see the pivot at at this point and then most likely another pivot a little bit later when Netflix is moving more toward its like liing leather rather than this

extremely expensive internal development that is kind of hard to you know find the payback on it so um you know all the best get your dough uh and um and hopefully hopefully it works out with for everybody we talked about this a little bit on the panel at games Forum because it broke I think that day and and Crest has thoughts as as you might imagine and well what are the things that and there were some questions from the audience about well what is working and and so we talked a little bit about the you know why you know what is working it are some of the the smaller games that are t mobile games that are tied to their IP so too hot to handle or the the interactive story apps and you know one of the things that's going to really help them is AI and the AI ability to pump out the content on the content Trend Mill that you need to do the basically soft porn interactive stories that they have you know that reaches certain audience and so I think

what they're starting to see is you know and and they're their their kpis are really interesting right they're trying to do some sort of like longer tale engagement like kpis we don't typically look at in you know freeo play and so I I think what they're all trying to figure out is you have a bunch of game makers coming in trying to be like okay what what actually works for these kinds of kpis and engagement and maybe they're starting to get there the new leaders from epic and so I imagine coming in from epic he had some thoughts on a triple shooter um so you know we we will continue to see where they go but like some of the smartest people in our industry are there yes and you know if anyone can figure it out like I hope they do right like I really want them to find the next model like we're seeing the next model in Roblox and ufn and ugc maybe this will something will come I don't know I'm trying to be glass half full and that we don't just this is not an X model this is a model that we've gone over over and over and over and

over over and over I know you're you're right I I was trying to be I was trying to be glassful and positive all right so uh Mishka let's talk about Investments because there was another report the Convoy folks yeah before we jump in there there were actually a few hires and fires as well happening in the industry that that are pretty interesting so um so uh machine Zone I think somebody posted on on our slack channel that it's no more I don't know about that but there was a post by n Spencer who's in machine Zone OG he spent nine years there he was VP of engineering then four and a half years as a VP of product of app love and he basically posts on LinkedIn saying that that you know him and his team are no no more at app loving and looking for for new challenges and of course Apple hav acquired machine Zone back in 2020 when things are getting hot and and everybody was getting acquired for $500 million talking about Consulting doof was there doing due diligence on that and uh um it was an interesting project and I would

say we still stand on on the recommendation we made uh anyways uh talking about other stuff uh supercell is all hands on deck for Squad Busters so this is hiring news uh they have a clearly a new kind of a pod or a team set up in London so I would assume that this is probably in the same spaces with spaceape who who has also been you know doing live Ops for supercell I I believe they are working on on some of the titles I know they were working on Boom Beach they're probably working on helping on Heyday so they have a close collaboration with them so it makes sense that London is that location also people like London they move to London that's not the same what people are saying about Helsinki I don't have anything against Helsinki but let's be you know honest um there's also a team being set up in shenzen uh they're looking for product folks to work on tensen side to work on Squad Busters so to me all this news all this hiring news is of course positive who wouldn't like to work at supercell great company uh

but it also shows the importance of the game for supercell because let's say they're unable for somewhat reason to turn it around that will be the first L that they take since like 2012 when when their last game failed uh and and that will also put a situation where management will actually have to answer like what the hell happened how did you end up launching a game without a soft launch and just you know going big on this like like what happened and so it's uh it's interesting uh another news that was kind of softly tied to this was the CMO departing you guys talked about it in the last episode and you kind of you know maybe draw the conclusion that hey well she was working on Squad Busters and she bet her you know quote unquote job on it and now she's gone and but but that's that's a false narrative because uh the CMO actually left before Squad Busters launched so so um you know it's a it's an interesting case but looks like like looks like you know they're

putting everything and anything behind Squad Busters to turn around and that will be great if they do if they succeed they have all the resources to to succeed but it's uh it's all Hands-On Deck cool oh thank you for that uh inside scoop on on all of that stuff that's fun what was the inside scoop I don't know well that you you know that they're setting up all of these teams I haven't seen that really written about I don't know oh it's a it's a that yeah so we we like sometimes people share the uh Head Hunter messages with us so these are from from those uh when they're asking people to if they would be interested in position X and Y uh but yeah uh I think I think super cell is doing the right thing I think the right thing is to do whatever the [ __ ] it takes to turn this around that's the right thing Phil can you save it do you think you can save it yes game Economist Consulting no as we wrote in the one of the pieces like I think that's the wrong attitude is to say we should go out and save this like the biggest problem right now is it's opportunity cost for a

company that's growing probably wants to IPO and wants to expand like you have you have your top design chief on this game he could be doing something else that has far more influence on Capital so like they got they got to set a timeline for themselves like one year in or out baby so I think you gotta move on Phil the the top design Chief is I to my knowledge not anymore in this game I think he was GM of this project and hence the GM Ro like he was the GM on that one so the GM rooll became free uh so it's um and and you said you know IPO I I truly believe that supercell was looking to IPO especially with the hire of CFO you know all these rumors throughout the years getting a more robust leadership team uh with a balanced men female ratio kind of helps you with with the IPO approach and I think that Squad Busters why they're putting all the resources behind this could be the reason why they won't be iping so if this one does not turn around then it's not a good narrative and so they're putting every effort to

make this turn around and if when it let's say when this does turn around that's going to be even better narrative like they can correct a game from a nose dive and you can IPO H it wasn't this didn't they get a new CFO and and was Crest saying that that CFO had like big company you hire that guy I think it's a guy when you want to go public Company CFO he said basically which is correct like you hire a public company CFO if you ain't about to go public that's that's it like you don't hire a brand marketer if you're not going to do brand maybe or you do I don't know oh well I mean I mean well they actually I mean the CMO if I remember she she came from King yes um and so you know I think folks that come from those types of experiences are a little bit of the unicorns right a little brand a little

performance but whatever happened you know it didn't seem to to work out so uh one less sadly female on that leadership team anyways let's talk about the uh the investments in m&a so uh there were two interesting reports Convoy quarter Q3 report and in gu invest game Q3 reports so basically just going super on a high level at a glance Market size $188 billion uh increase year over-year is at 2% project projected growth towards 20 20 29 is going to increase towards 3% year-over-year uh for context um the uh the the industry thank you Phil for the uh for the image so for context uh the industry grew about 20% uh compound annual growth rate before 2022 and now it's 10th of that so uh we're in a low growth phase and it's not going to change according to to

Convoy who do exceptionally good reports every time um on the VC side we're seeing that uh that growth funding picked up again so overall amount of funding overall dollar amount was the same uh there was a new low in early stage funding which means that Moler money went to growth funding and then that money was away from from new games so their VCS are very conservative and allocating very carefully another interesting T tidbit from from the information was that us gaming funding were more than in terms of dollars more than Asia and Europe combined so all the money goes to the US but when you look at the number of of funding H they were about a third of of those so meaning that the rounds in us are um uh what's the uh what's the super sized that's that's that would be the correct term so Americans like it big they like super sized rounds Texans do T they like the

Texan rounds uh and then um and and uh m&a transactions were at the levels of 2023 which is of course low level compared to the crazy years of 2020 2021 2022 and exits are important because exits is where the VC's make their money and so when there's no exits there's no return on Capital when there's no return on Capital uh it's harder to raise new funds and as we've been you know basically you look at the kpis of all the gaming funds that were raised in 2021 2022 like on the booming years when you could just raise your hand and get a fund going uh those kpis are not looking good and so uh issues with VC's Venture capitalists being able to raise funds means that the startups will have issues to raise their Capital means that there's going to be less companies getting funded and so forth so it's kind of a uh chicken and egg type of a problem that we're seeing so Phil you had some interesting graphs that he took

away from Convoy as well um yeah I would say I mean the thing that mostly struck me was like yep AI is getting money they they reported that 22% of gaming VC funding in q324 went into companies related to or referencing AI so it is it is happening you know buckle buckle in it is happening and some of these AI companies I hadn't heard before you know I'm not as involved in the space I'm sure as you are Mishka but but volley Series Entertainment strade I mean these ones I mean carbonated I'd heard of but you know these are companies that that seem to be up and coming too and they raised huge amounts of capital I mean Vol 55 million alone yeah wow yeah yeah there there were some some graphs saying that there's not going to be less AI funding I'm I'm familiar with some of those companies Meda definitely familiar with that uh shout out to them uh but oh I wanted to add to this news since you're to this news since you're showing largest gaming aivc deals I just received a message before we started recording from anthon gin who was the uh the founder and CEO of huge Games The

Social Casino Games company so he launched a new company called Beyond OS it's an AI company the intersections of AI and um entertainment so having fun with AI he's been posting a lot of AI generated images on on LinkedIn where he looks like James Bond uh those are not real those are AI generated people are like you look Jack dude I'm like yeah he is Jack but but like guys come on like AI anyway Anton is a builder with with a capital b um he's so so when he's doing something he's super excited about it and he's super excited about this company um yeah curious to to uh to see what they will build with the AI step into the future of game monetization with exola exola empowers developers and Publishers to market sell connect and optimize their games globally from payment solution to a full suit of tools designed to grow your games Revenue while fostering a lawyer player base exola is your game's gateway to worldwide success with exola the world

is your playground visit exa.com today and find all the solutions that will help you to power your games into success everywhere all right let's talk some games Age of Empires finally out Phil you had a look it's here Age of Empires is out it is from Timmy if you remember correctly this is a forx game but is using I don't know we could call it the Forex meta of changing what might be the initial gameplay from the inti from the from the eventual gameplay so just a quick forx refresher unfortunately this is a p PNG image so it doesn't have the best background but if we look at market share in terms of downloads for the Forex genre and again we're using the sensor Tower definition here which I think does a pretty good job of capturing Forex there are one or two things that seem to slip like sea of Conquest was a recent uh fund plus release that didn't end up getting classified here but by and large I think this does a pretty good job of capturing it and the United States has been around a fourth of Forex revenue and the other

I would say large share when it comes to revenue rather than downloads has actually been China China actually swings pretty hard when it comes to revenue per download they're swinging far above what you would expect from their download share when it comes to just absolute Revenue that comes from Forex and when we look at the top games year-to dat in the Forex space it's exactly who you'd expect at least recently if you've been following the news last war survival has been number one by by and far 29 E3 million white out survival is another $200 million enony oh my God this thing's been running forever this thing this thing has been running forever and this is just us by the way we're just looking at us did 140 million um I've just I was surprised to see some of the games on here if there's there's another game you don't see on here which is Star Trek Fleet command which has actually gotten exceptionally soft recently oh [ __ ] we Adam do you want us to cut this I won't talk about it we'll just cut it all right well here I'll just give give me a sec yeah dear Dom can I can I say that Star Trek fle

commen is not in here or is that does that freak you out no you can say that that's factual just like don't don't like do a a thing on the future of serch okay okay I was actually gonna like sof I wasn't that okay uh you don't see yeah you don't see you don't see Star Trek Fleet command on here it's actually fallen out of the top 10 in terms of Revenue in the United States and you see a lot of Chinese companies dominating the US in fact most of the games on here from Chinese companies not score Warriors score Warriors is cyphus a what score warriors uh total battle war of Empires that is actually from Cyprus it's it's a one game company they're actually formerly from Russia they relocate a lot of people um to Cyprus really somebody relocated to from Russia to Cyprus what yeah that's you've never heard of that [Laughter] before they're they're building a pipeline um so so we have we have some data but it has been leas um and it's actually a relatively strong launch and I chose sea

of Conquest to Benchmark it against we could choose a million different games but I would say the theme has been the same in that Timmy which is the developer they licensed it from Microsoft it looks like uh so this is a 10-cent game they actually did a little bit of burst marketing to start and they got around a million downloads at launch a little bit more than a million downloads that's far and above a lot of Forex launches recently so they're giving this thing a big boost to see whether or not it'll have any traction let's keep track of it let's see how it does but this is this is a pretty explosive at least High budget launch I don't think this is anything about game quality but there's still a lot of competition that's happening in Forex even post idfa oh I mean this category is still on fire but I love your your take it's not really a take the fact that almost all of these games that are popular in the US and monetizing are by Chinese companies and so I wonder is that because of the amount of people that you need to just do the content for the I mean I I would love to learn more that

seems interesting to me yeah I this used to be a didn't this used to be like a us thing like a lot of those so this used to be machine Zone back when machine Zone was let by their their CEO who would sue the [ __ ] out of everybody who even put in 4 X's back to back and so they kind of dominated this Market but you can't sue the Chinese send a letter seasoned assist over to Beijing and they're not going to obey anyways just joking around but what happened was like the the Chinese developers really rose rose from uh from from China there was plenty of them uh some of them are still on the list and and these type of games like they they take quite big of a team like machine Zone was deceptively ugly looking small game small like not machine zone game of war and then um the uh what was the other one with Arnold on the uh on the top of it uh mobile stri mobile yeah mobile strike like they're deceptively simple looking games but in fact they

are almost like social platforms uh and so the especially the engineering teams have to be really really robust and and the team Siz of these these games even back in the days went to hundreds and very few of the uh Publishers developers were able to to achieve that but what makes them also very interesting is that once you have one game made you can actually make several ones because you essentially have the platform you have the live option you the engine that's people understand is the Forex engine is very expensive I have a Breaking Bad Breaking Bad Empire business that 2 to show you that here's where the engine broke uh but the engine is actually rather expensive like you usually host 10,000 people in A Single Shard or single world and they're mirrored worlds and that's requires a lot of server Engineers yeah yeah yes and the the the running costs are pretty expensive there's the uh the the synchronous translation elements like all of this is is is so hardcore and and um and yeah they have uh incredibly High ltvs

they've Ed all the Poss like if you look at Evan's creative strategies you will find every single creative strategy ever done on mobile inside that one app they they just do everything so their playbook is do everything and U and they can afford that because the ltvs are so high and now we're seeing a lot of other genres taking a uh playbook out of 4x's like we've seen uh card battle not card battle but puzzle RPG games take take a piece of this we're seeing some other ones where they're combining different genres and so we started off with mini games but now it's more like genre mashes where there is that that 4X element that allows that social crazy competitive High LTV gameplay uh but um but yeah most of them are coming in from from China our cherot 2 has soft launched in Canada and a quick repap of of habby's portfolio because I think sometimes uh we we forget that our cherro has faded quite a bit it still is I would say an incredible story I remember this is one of the god almost

original doof pieces on it with the the founder who would go and found navic too that you know was built in unity assets by default it's one of those inspiring Indie stories that kind of built habby the the developer into what it is today but it's it's fallen on hard time I won't say hard times it's it's certainly declined in terms of Revenue ended up topping out at around 250 million net revenue that doesn't include ads we know ads are a decent source of Revenue in our chero but when you look at Happy's portfolio survivor.io has really been the success story it launched much later than archero did archero I think was what 2018 2019 and survivor.io came out in late 2022 s survivor.io has done over 400 million and our TR has done around 250 million and Sur survivor. I's trajectory also looks a lot better ja's other games have been mostly chunk change in their portfolio in terms of driving revenue for them it's almost all surv survivor IO archero and then a little bit of Souls which is their squad

likee RPG which just kind of came out of nowhere in terms of like their usual Playbook and we know they have not only archero 2 which we just mentioned soft launch they've got capara go which is another game that we should talk about pretty soon which has been exciting SSS snaker if you remember that that was another recent release that they went Global with looks really soft probably won't be hanging around for another year or two certainly not the longevity it's had with the other titles I don't know how to say the name of the new game but I'm just going to call it the Koopa tra game yeah it's like the cutest little like what is that thing it's like a guinea pig yeah you've see them in Japan all the time well I'm not often in Japan so it's like a it's like a a guinea pig that ate a dog a small dog what sounds but when when looking at these Revenue curves like everyone holds up habby as like this perfect developer for hybrid games are there any good examples of hybrid casual games that have durable

um Revenue Curves in terms of like not that kind of Spike and Decay over time but actually grow over time yeah good good point uh I don't know about growth I can't I can't think of any that have grown they usually I mean it's it's get a lot of downloads very quickly CPI Spike uh hold on move on yeah on more like that kind of Spike you know two to three years lifetime but then you've got to be able to move on to your hybrid casual game and the advantage obviously is Dev cost and Dev timing is significantly shorter but I would just look at that like I look at that cumulative curve sorry the next um image you have there of um like the Stacked area graph of their revenue and I'm looking at this like hey survivor.io is a great game obviously spiked up Revenue but this feels like a sinking s business model where you've got to continually feed that engine with new games instead of a traditional uh life service business where you can build up a solid foundation and build on those new games I I think that's fair I think

it is a good case study for hybrid casuals problem which is like okay we solved acquisition we solved early game we solved some monetization issues but we can't solve long run retention and I think that's also apparent when you just play where our cherro is right now there's like a million different verticals gameplay verticals and thing they've just been like just like bolting on fees like there's a there's a farm animal raising feature like it's it's a whole Loop like they they kind of just keep throwing [ __ ] at it um and so you know okay what do you do if you're hybrid casual like this is the next thing they've got to they got to deal with is like okay well you solved acquisition you solved early retention how do you translate this into long run retention yeah I'm constantly thinking like comparing the the two stories right you think about 4X as probably the most durable live model on mobile right and then you compare this to the hybrid casual model here and you're like how did the advantage of this is you can get those downloads the disadvantage of it is that you kind of kneecap Yourself by

intentionally creating these lighter weight progression systems and then having to instead of you know add new interesting progression vectors now you're just adding whole new progression verticals onto your game like farming in order to try to sustain it as best as you can instead of like how do we how do we marry this better to a more durable live model to begin with let me try to answer this Adam we're talking about two very different type of business models and so there's not one is better than the other one like when we're talking about Forex only very few companies have the resources to even enter the competition in Forex games because of that and then on the other side you have hybrid casual which is Philly if you want to open up the the next image I put it in from our hybrid casual Playbook done by deconstructor fun together with meta then uh so basically what you have you Consultants come on man do we have a game economus Consulting slide in here is that is that in the back where Jade Inferno yeah anyway so be careful you'll be

Consulting too soon anyways so uh so the definition of hybrid casual games is is like there's there's four elements to that there's the design part which is you're taking a hyper casual game and you are adding stats based progression in most of them like except the P puzzle games but you're adding a stat page progression and that allows you to do the live operation attacking all those added elements to the core Loop which in order to increase the retention in order for you to actually have a D30 and to bid against 30 because your game might have like 3 months to six months of Lifetime then you have then then you have the the marketing part which because these games are produced relatively fast and and compared to to other casual gains the production values are not so high so so you're trying to Market them at the lower cpis just like the hyper casual game the production it's high speed it takes a lot of elements from hyper casual but just adds that another element which is basically production and liveops and then finally there's the monetization which is the com combination of of inapp ads and inapp purchases but overall like like

you you make a very good comparison by by putting in basically the the two different spectrums of the business you got the 4x's where you're trying to keep the player for 10 years and so forth and then you take the ones where where you have a game that just doesn't have the same type of a lifetime we're talking about probably months of active gameplay over years but then again who's really succeeding in Hy hybrid hybrid casual is the hybrid casual Publishers like we're looking here at HBY and you would be seeing a growth inside their portfolio when you look at their different games they're using actually the same meta systems and they are actually publishing other developers games because if you look at them if you launch the game some of them have a different publisher name so they're able to get that Innovation coming in from other Studios then tack in their Central Tech tools their their uh their live op systems their meta progression systems sometimes maybe even doing a fullon asset acquisition and just running that game that has very good early stage retention uh in order to move forward from that day 30 so just

a totally different business model not worse not better but in order to be a successful hybrid casual publisher you you essentially have to be a real ass publisher like you have to have more than one you can't just rely on one game bringing all of your revenue from now to Eternity all right what's next folks all right uh I'm throwing something in there so I noticed that uh tense Delta Force has had a listen to me Phil with a with a steam comment they had a killer Steam nextfest and they've announced our open beta for PC and they've actually moved out the mobile version of the game and the console version of the game to 2025 so this is a kind of a realistic extraction shooter lots of different modes uh it got over two million wish lists on Steam and it was the fourth most wish list title on the platform currently actually it is right now it topped all of the official steam

nextfest charts with uh the game being in the top spot on trending upcoming popular upcoming and top demos I think it it beat out the X Riot um theorycraft game I think came in second Super superv we should talk yeah yeah no of course I I love those guys um you know because it's I know and oh we gota wait for cresto because it's kind of like a mooba hybrid and I want him to be here for that so with the thing that that I thought was really funny and well and actually really shitty is that uh Delta Force came out and announced that their open Beta was on December 5th which is one day before the very publicly stated Net's Marvel Rivals open Beta launch on December 6 so um not sure if that's uh putting the M middle finger up to somebody else um it's like kind of the anti- prices right strategy though that come in the one day before but it it's going to be interesting to see what happens you know with those two kind of

coming out at the same time Phil I I I I thought of you and I saw this this feels like a game that's up your alley like and what do you think about the idea of splitting out the the platforms you know we sometimes we see that as a as a bad thing but I was curious to hear your take so Adam just hosted a panel on first person shooters which we will I don't know Adam when are you going to release that when are we going to release the podcast as as it's ready I think like all signs are good so hopefully actually pretty quickly right after this so we talk we talk a lot about first person shooters and it's interestingly enough this one did not did not make the list uh Jen when you when you push a mobile skew back for a PC skew it usually means it's dead you know there's usually some person who's fighting for the Dual skew strategy and when push comes to shove the mobile skew is always the one that gets the boot I think this has happened to me three times in my career I can I can think of three specific projects where this was in a if it was in pnl which made the p&l look good uh boosts everything up uh usually it's an HD

developer that doesn't know how to do mobile and although although to you know to to the point like this is Timmy uh if I understand correctly so this is Timmy let's let's see how let's see if they can they can actually deliver on this but it's not a good sign when the mobile skew gets delayed I I guess that's all I have to say on this one let's see Ste I don't give a [ __ ] that the mobile skew is delayed like I think this lives or dies mostly based on PC yep and if they can get a footprint on Console like for for me like yeah I get the p&l games um but this thing lives or dies if on PC and playing it like I think like it'll it could do well on on on mobile given the the pedigree of the developer um but I just think that it's incremental and tact Dawn and if it could be launched six months later like yes it'll have an impact it wouldn't be as big of a launch if you can do it all at the same time but the the reality is like this thing lives or dies based on its retention and I hope that the open

Beta can give them some signals but it almost makes more sense for me to like go on PC first go out for like six months on PC make sure retention is solid and then get a a amazing 1.0 release 6 months out which is all PC Mobile console all at the same time and then you throw your marketing eggs in that basket I like that strategy um and like from playing this like it's it's interesting too because it's a battlefield and tarov right like it's got extraction and Battlefield um I actually mostly played the battlefield mode and it was pretty good like it was it was a a pretty good thing so like for for me this is also just signaling like the the pedigree of Chinese developers um being able to go after um a space that most people have pointed to like being Western dominant uh with Battlefield and dice um and it's a it's a pretty good version and um all hats off to them but I think from our PVP podcast the bar is very very high to retain so I'm more bullish on a strategy

to make sure the retention is good and delay that launch if they can't get the retention up to to par Battlefield is weak like Battlefield has been weak for a really long time and it pains me pains me to say that but battlefields weak they're not they're not shipping on normal two-year Cycles they're not they're not employing the Cod strategy that died with Hardline there are there there is movement on Steam in these large scale Shooters like if you look at hell um if you look at some of these military large scale 64 32 player Shooters like there is interesting things happening on Steam and I wonder if you know if you can actually get content right which has been dice's problem that I can I talk about with excruciating specificity let's get into that I mean I mean honestly just compare the number of guns that were released in Battlefield 4 to Battlefield 2042 and I think you can really just tell all of dice's story through through a chart of the number of guns released at each each skew I think that does a pretty effective job and I do wonder what happens in Triple A when you think about a Content heavy game

that that is like a large scale Battlefield and you you actually have the headcount to match it you know what what happens and I don't think we've seen Chinese life service in Triple A in a big way and you know it's interesting that Marvel Rivals which for whatever reason I I feel like has gotten such a big conversation super War which is the MOBA never got this much conversation but Marvel Rivals like it's also from China like there's a lot of AAA Chinese stuff coming you know it black myth wukan was uh was was a warning shot uh and we we already know that blade Point um nakaka has done incredible business on Steam it's been there it's been there for a couple years uh you know I just wonder fast forward 10 years from now what is the share of the steam charts that are dominated by Chinese Publishers much higher than I would assume today which is great I think it's it's it forces then a lot of the you know out of Chinese developers to innovate and to think through their their live operations which is great um yeah like I I would just say with like with Delta Force launching right on top of Marvel Marvel Rivals there will be it'll be very difficult to to raise

the bar the one nice thing here though is you're talking about Battlefield remember they uh Vince announced next year I think it's the end of next year is when the big Battlefield bet is coming uh they announced it at their their recent um investor panel which included a lot of Studios all supporting one Battlefield so we're saying Battlefield is dead now by the Fall I think EA is put in that just be clear she's okay Phil is toning down his language okay Phil it it is is hang out supp the back catalog does crazy business I'll say that back we're still still still selling a lot of Battlefield ones still selling a lot of Battlefield 4S yeah but it it looks like they're learning from 2042 and they're putting it's it's not as if they're decreasing investment in the next franchise they're definitely increasing it and putting the right uh people on it so looking forward to that yeah just not on mobile yeah I'm just most baffled by the fact that before the recording Phil said that he

doesn't think that Delta Force is a real thing like that's a the capital capital D Delta Force like actual team I actual the one there's a name that's called Delta for but there it's not like um it's a military unit yes military unit but not like a there's a specific team that's called Delta Force yes there is like you like when when you need hostage rescue like the one for with the US uh hostages in Deon that was Delta Force no all I mean is like Bob Bob is Delta Force okay all right I'll give you that anyway any boy all right well let's let's let's move on to another topic that um I thought was really interesting and has come up a lot and I think it was actually a former uh Sony leader was out there talking about um you know the kind of almost like the death of dable a and that you know how does this kind of impact the ecosystem but you know Adam well you take this one yeah sure so uh

it was Sean leaden who's head of Sony's worldwide Studios previously um and he was talking about The Disappearance of ablea Studios um talked about how today's green lights are too focused on monetization come on Phil recurrent Revenue come on Phil subscription formula wait like we we need to make money when we spend hundreds of millions of dollars oh not enough on is it fun and uh pointing to budgets which are in the triple digits driving down risk tolerance um especially for sequels improving models uh the direct quote we're seeing collapse of creativity in games today with Studio consolidation at the High Cost of production to be honest we've covered this so like throwing up in my mouth right now like but I don't know I I I agree with this we've talked about like the the um risk tolerance for AAA going down and this is even true on mobile especially given ecosystem but to be honest like I look back at myself 15

years ago and I was still looking at a stack of discs with the number three or more on it like it's not as if this has been a abrupt transition in the last five years there's always been a slow and steady transition towards more less and less risk taking in the triaa industry and uh specifically Sean was pointing to the death of doublea in the gaming business you have Call of Duty Grand Theft Auto and IND stuff but then that middle layer used to be where interplay Gremlin ocean THQ and a lot of those companies made their money that middle piece is gone so if you can become triaa you can survive if you can do something interesting in the Indie space you could but double A is gone um that's the direct quote which to be honest I'm confused by uh I'd like to take some time AC Crest and talk about it also dive into some newu data because like every day on LinkedIn somebody's pointing to Hell divers P world balers gate and Space Marine as the

future while trip flag it's a false flag like I I want to look at more data to confirm or deny this thesis right because back in July newu reported on doublea fortunes actually being much better this year after an abysmal 2023 so for the the flagship there the example in in my mind there is Allan Wake 2 in 2023 having a real big struggle despite a critical success but that was a lot to do with triaa slate this year the triaa state's weaker and then you have a a double a growth okay but is doublea dead I generally just think it's just changing hands to Publishers that can better align with what players want um so doublea actually being a big part of the future because as we've talked about many times on this podcast we need to figure out ways for AAA devs to be able to lower cost raise quality and raise margins overall and I think doublea could be very much

critical part of that conversation and I think yes those like examples those outliers of Hell divers power world and balers gate are outliers but they still signal that like if we can find out the right things that players value lean into those there is a future but if Triple A continues to raise costs and if doublea continues to struggle in terms of getting the units sold on some of those smaller bets then to be honest both a a and AAA are in struggles Adam can you kind of walk us through like what is a double a AAA and quadruple a which is also being used by companies like Ubisoft like can you yeah like can you just can can you give us a little bit of a tonomy and with a with a game as an example sure I don't know what what single a is I've never heard a single a game is it like battle bit like like any kind of an game would be a single a just just throw in shade um no no you like four guys battle bit okay so there's AAA which hopefully I don't have

to Define but is like typically right now is going to be triple digits or more types of game developments mostly made by Major Publishers doublea is typically lower cost um so between say like 10 and 100 million death cost types of of projects given the state of the industry right now um so good examples of this would be things like Allen wake would be things like control space Marine that's typically in that double a range and then Indie is everything kind of Falls lower than that so that would be the slay the spires like the the if if if you want to try to like really ladder It Up by Dev cost you can go less than 10 but then again like even then power world would be technically Indie even though I think some people might say it's on the line to doublea well so Chris's point on power world specifically is that there is a lot of money that they got to make that so that you know I've heard His Story three times time so I'll repeat it uh which is they started in 2015 they um kind of in his his words

like ripped off Zelda so they built the engine and then they they transitioned they took money from Microsoft which was an original 7 million and then they actually had additional funding that isn't often talked about that took them above the 10 million and it took them you know like you know nine years to make that thing so po world uh I think hell hell divers also has some you know additional you know it's backed by Sony and and they have a lot of help it was also like a lot of time right like was but eighty year type of production yeah and so these are the you know when these are the ones held out held up as the triple as the doublea's they're they're not exactly what double A really is and so I think when that that's been the challenge is pointing to what is a an actual doublea success story there there aren't as many of them and we see from all the news newu data in both Mau and in revenue is the consolidation right

now in a mature industry that the big are getting bigger and all of you know all of the Playtime all of the revenue are going to the franchises uh there's only I think it's if I remember correctly 8% of PE of of players ship going to new games in 2023 it is um you know I think you're looking at okay I think I don't think play time is the success metric for box games in terms of playtime share in the year it's going to be Revenue share of the whole thing and then making sure that we use the right categorization of the different sure I don't know if I'm only talking about box games because some of these games are live operated experience and and so that's a good distinction and and we can go back when we pulled the data and talk about those things but I I think the general takeaway is that it feels like in a mature industry the bigger getting bigger and it is we are see a lot of challenges with double A finding you know true doua finding

success yeah go ahead so that's the thing is like you I looked at that new Zoo graph right 2023 was an abysmal year so when we look at 2024 that's a pretty low Baseline to say like the amount of growth also AAA the Slate is significantly weaker this year and the AAA games have all been there's been a lot of really struggling AAA games this year where and that double a category has been doing better but then you go it's actually still roughly equal to what was happening in 2022 so it's not as if there's this like massive Spike and now doublea is successful this has just been like a continuing segment of the market yeah from pre 2023 but but I think you're right in the core question Jen is like put away all the daa AAA [ __ ] everyone just wants to know if I can small guys win is there still an opportunity for small guys to come in and win both in Mobile and HD and the analysis usually returns well

the bigger getting bigger exactly to your point Jen however we want to cut that the the problem with a lot of those analysis is that they don't show us the growth in the market so for instance like if you ranked let's say 25th in 2020 and we looked at what it meant to be ranked 25th top grossing and let's say 2024 you would be at a much lower rank because the overall revenue of the app store has increased so you can be a lower rank for instance to still make the equivalent amount of money that you would have made beforehand so even if the big are taking bigger shares the pie could be growing at such a rate that everyone could still be doing better you could still have a shot to get into the market I I I haven't seen that analysis done that's the analysis I want to see is what what does it translate to in terms of ranks but I I think it would probably show something similar to what you're speculating on genen it just may not be as bad as you would expect but this is what happens when Jers get refined I don't think there's anything I I don't understand what this conversation has always confused me to your point there's never any data it's just like AAA is dead double A is dead I feel like I go through these Cycles like

every [ __ ] six months like I just want to puke in my mouth it's just like people talking out of their ass it drives me drives me [ __ ] crazy drives me [ __ ] crazy using real data um yep well one of the versus I mean the thing is we'll never get production we'll never get production stuff well the so at La tech tech week last week um you know a lot of folks were we were talking about this topic and I have a lot of friends that are trying to go raise money in that you know3 to10 million range and their feedback is nobody wants to talk to them or give them money in that range it's a no man's land is what they were calling it in terms of the ability to go raise money to be able PC console yeah wow okay yeah that's not enough yeah and so so that sorry well you know but that sure it you know I'm not saying it was a shooter I'm you know I don't know exactly you know I don't know if you can

so or can we not make games for that amount of money at all is it truly a no man's land and you just can't make a a p game it's just the amount of risk this so the the the type of like kpis that I'd love to see is margins because the issue is like when we just look at it in playtime obviously it's going to skew heavily towards multiplayer live service games if you look at it on Revenue then you're going to see like more to do with the the units up front but the reality is as we've seen from like the Sony leak a lot of those Triple G A games might be able to get a lot on Revenue but the reality is those costs are raising so high that they end up being unprofitable versus like is there a space in doublea where you can get between like let's say like five million to 50 million in funding and be more profitable on a margin basis and I think you actually had a little bit of a preview in this when you saw the embracer shake up and you looked at their different business units one doublea publisher and one more Indie and

where the margins actually shook up and where the margins were higher between their different business units H that's interesting I know that the um the Volver like if you think about the really small uh PC Publishers like devolver or I forgot what Good Shepard just rebranded into you know a lot of their funding is sub3 million for the games that they're looking at doing and even even less than that and so it just feels weird that there are these you know that there's that big no man's land in the middle of like hey I'm G to play a little kind of indie game and spend 10 or $20 on that item versus I think another thing we didn't talk about is is doublea is also a price point to a player I think it's 30 or maybe it's 40 or below I think I read that somewhere that there there that's another kind of benchmark for people is what is the what are you selling that thing for and so you're right Adam that okay if it's from

a player perspective I'm going to buy a doublea game for x amount of of retail cost 30 or 40 then I have to factor that into to My overall margin structure and is that going to you know am I going to be able to survive on that I don't know no the perfect data here would be margins and sort of risk profile at each one of those different Dev cost bands to be able to give you a sense of like where the market is growing the unfortunate bit is like because there's no way we' ever get that data it's just never going to happen then we start to get these piecewise LinkedIn articles on like power world and Space Marine and then you you don't hear all of those stories of these doublea developers um a lot of these games all struggling because they end up going too high cost for the relatively low amount of units they end up selling cool all right can I add this on on like a totally a tangent note that could be absolutely worth nothing or they could something so I was thinking about this in the sense like the Sean's point it's almost like U

could be or could not be of course the projection from what happened in movie business so um when DVD back in the days when when you when we were young DVDs were were a big thing and and it was part of the business it was part of your business case meaning that there was less pressure to launch that next big movie with the with the big box office because you could afford get a lot of your a bigger chunk sometimes of your Revenue coming in from DVD sales uh before it was sold for for TV rights and so forth and so movies could be made to appeal to a smaller audience but beforehand because of the DVD sales but because the DVD died uh it made such more focused films a huge risk for the studios which leads to Studios then FK doing their AAA releases the the franchises the Marvels uh the the re-releases of the of the movies the breaking points and whatnot and that kind of led to death of certain types of

movies that we all loved like the original romcoms shout out to Matthew MCC back when he was doing great movies and all kinds of like family movies and so forth like we just don't see them anymore and even when I was Googling like what were the sort of a biggest DVD movies like sha Shank Redemption was actually a huge on DVD like it did it did poorly on in box office Fight Club didn't do that well in box office Blade Runner apparently a DVD Hugo the the Oscar winning and of course the biggest ones were animation anything that that Pixar and other ones because you could buy those and then kids would rewatch them 2,000 times and and my point here is is more about like when this sort of a channel died what happened was that that the the studios focused on big releases big franchises big bets and it's win or go bust and streamers take the the smaller movies but they're quite not investing the same way so is this kind of like the thing that is happening with with it's for

sure happening with triaa because the investment cost is so big that you have to be very conservative you have to do a part of a franchise like this is Battlefield XV or Call of Duty you know of this year and so forth but but you can't just take any more of these risks and through that you're not being able to do the the dable A games like Allan Wake too that seemed to have failed uh even to recoup its development costs so to could be totally wrong thinking Mishka 1999 called and wants its business model back yeah bring back romcom that's what I'm saying well bring back DVD you know I mean listen oh my god when I was at Disney that DVD unit um I mean they were printing money with those Disney DVDs with that the especially was limited time right they were they were the they were the creators of fomo and they would go out and say it's Little Mermaid on DVD you can only get it this year and then it's never out again and so all the parents are rushing to you know buy the

DVD and then those [ __ ] wanted to put a plush with the DVD and I'm trying to sell plush for $15 at a store and they want to give it away for free and so imagine the fight that happened between those two business units no but I think you know it's interesting that because of the amount of games available on Steam it's like 10,000 every year people just move on to the next thing and so there is no kind of back half Revenue opportunity and Phil I don't know you're probably better what are you talking about they they people people sell back catalog all the time like black myth wukan back withth wukan still is like top 20 engagement you can make a lot of money catalog I I mean look I'm saying outside of launch month like you can still make money on the back Cog we were just talking about Battlefield Battlefield still sends a [ __ ] ton of units on Battlefield 4 still has a really active player base Battlefield one like they they are making good amounts of money every single year they pay dividends and I assume that all these doua games we've just been talking about Space Marine I would assume that one of the decisions to re to to

Greenlight Space Marine 2 was looking at the tail sales for the original Space Marine which had a pretty big cult following too to to mishka's point like you can still find an audience here like DVD has always existed for games you can go play these single player games at any at any point I I would argue like the technological the capital degration is stronger in games though than a romcom like playing a game from 1990 is a far worse experience than from 1990 all right so we've gone for a long time uh thank you very much and we will see you next week everyone thank you everybody 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 in the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or

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