TWIG #306 Is Apple’s Big Move a Trick or a Treat?

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games number 306 where we're going to go through all kinds of game industry news and bring you up to speed on how things are going so here's what we have going on today cres is back and so he fires back at us after being out last week I think I listened back and I was like oh yeah we did make fun of him throughout the whole presentation how dare you mock me how dare you Mr Philip black stop it Jen just stop it chis I say that now in real life all the time all right anyway so here's a the other things we have Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is out and we're going to take a look at how it's doing zinga's rolic soft launch is a Barbie merge game and I have feedback for them if anyone ever takes a toy brand to video games

please for the love of God just call me first is my recap on the feedback so hi I'm Jen Donna strategic marketing consultant at Jaden Inferno and Beta had and today we have Philip black game Economist at game Economist Consulting let's cook Eric Crest principal at gossamer Consulting Group it's just getting worse and worse I know I know and Mishka katov founder of deconstructor of fund hello hello hi I I think I'm going to next week I'm going to make you all start doing your own intros I think that's going to be our November surprise is is going to be that all right so speaking of November we're still in October and by the time you hear this happy Halloween for those that celebrate it and the guys were telling me that I you know a while ago it used to not be a thing in Europe that this crazy American holiday is a thing but you know the the biggest thing for me is I'm trying to figure out if Crest is going to dress up as B Spencer or large

from embracer and ask for a treat instead of a trick this year yeah right yeah no I you know what the honest truth I have actually only one costume since my kids were born and it's a cookie monster costume that has been around for like 18 years and it's filthy and gross it's just and it's super super gross anyway that's the only I hate Halloween I [ __ ] hate Halloween I hate dressing up wife always forces me I [ __ ] can't stand it but well looking stupid in a costume like that is fine uh all right well it's good to be back we are clearly is the season of conferences right one after the other it's like ridiculous and mishka's boondoggle Adventure will will start very soon this is by the way a problem like I'm having a call with with like clients and they're like so if I would say I'm busy on like certain day they were like

oh is it your Jet Set life it's like I gave you a shout out last two weeks ago I said you're actually working yes I in all fairness we did call out like you you are out there hustling and I think what we don't often say about you is not only are you the founder of deconstructor of fun you are chief hustle officer so you're the one out there getting a lot of gigs for us working with all the sponsors and so thank you for that I will give you a Kudos thank you next week I'll be in Abu Dhabi sling so there we go I do not gonna post photos because Phil is gonna Phil is gonna talk about them like oh my God private Chef blah blah blah I mean don't give me the ammo there's nothing to shoot man want me to tell you yeah yeah we we work with good partners so be throwing nice events I have to say I have a quick basketball update for those that give a [ __ ] my

first freshman year season is starting in next week they played this team called the rearing Crusaders they are the number one team in California they played him over the weekend and uh this team is [ __ ] insane they have like five D1 players they had this kid and I'm not exaggerating he is 610 250 okay he is like imported really from Cameroon and his kaminga from the warriors's cousin and his best friend from Cameroon came up to go to high school here and play these kids are huge so we're in the car my dad my my son's all Dad I just don't want to get dunked on I don't want to get dunked on please I hope I just don't get dunked on right and so he gets in after like three or four minutes after the game starts and 30 seconds later he goes to held defense and he just gets completely dunked over right now in his defense he held his ground he did held his ground he didn't get dumped over and get like teab bagged you know on the way down it was

he actually held his own but man it was it was unbelievable they just dominated us right this team assist so that was his first High School experience so I'm sure there'll be many more also just wanted to talk about some of these I was going to say [ __ ] events you know I don't know man like sometimes I think there's two types of conferences for gaming why there's there's the Shilling conferences and there is the pontificating conferences you know so it's either one or the other right so like like something like Dice and uh Game beat are like kind of like the OG older guys just talking talking talking and like they're all PR trained they don't say a [ __ ] thing right it's not even that interesting because you don't learn anything all you do is meet people or but this games Forum conference is just it's a constant sales pitch you know particularly the you know the adtech and UA ones it's like these people cannot provide insights without

selling part of their souls you know like that's every time I I just feel that like it's just unbelievable now I get it that's the purpose of this event right the these are they're trying to sell their Wares I I 100% agret but for me all I really care about is like kind of what's happening in the business so these people were like at full force at the games Forum you know the AI tools for advertising rewarded advertising dude this [ __ ] was everywhere how many [ __ ] rewarded advertising companies are there I mean they're like coming out of the woodwor it's basically you know rewarded adver in 2.0 and my opinion has not changed here either by the way I mean I think some of them are doing amazing work but it seems like a good channel right but it's not a very deep Channel there's lot the berry entr are low so there's like tons and tons of companies that are coming at it so which incentivizes you to pay more and more money to to players which lower margins so I'm not sure if these actually will scale and be all that great of a business but I'm sure there'll be a couple that that survive and are good channels but there were a few bright

spots from my experience of games Forum I thought Josh Shanley from Wild Card games he was dropping knowledge and the F bombs which I totally appreciate up there a Warren Woodward from uptick he was actually also on on Joseph Kim's podcast recently which I yeah I I would recommend that I think he's more on the smaller scale of UA but like really clear and concise no gaslighting no [ __ ] you know like about what's going on in the business clearly very smart guy he also mentioned that he thinks that they will ultimately block fingerprinting which I thought that was that done deal that's not happening but we'll see but really honest discussion about the UA market adtech and UA folks should take note I thought the coolest thing from the AI perspective was blackbox.com but I you know I don't know much about that business but I think it's worth looking at the idea that was the AI plat form that evaluates your ads and the

competitor ads and it automatically generates new creative and tests it so blackbox AI or replay AI those are the companies that are in that area and if you're looking to optimize you're creative and you're like you know seeing performance results like that's going to be your next creative solution or or those types of PL Partners yeah and then gam speed was this week I only went to the first day this is like again like a dice type event right it's primarily console PC folks not a lot of Mobile going on far more like senior people here you know obviously all PR trained to say [ __ ] nothing for 45 minutes whatever time is there anything anything useful seriously like dude I I I almost lost my goddamn mind I was listening to this i i s trans media was said like 50 times in the first 40 minutes it's like gota be kidding you know Amazon woman was up there and some other stuff it was it was it was bad but like it's OG

gaming folk and it was cool to see some old friends like Bryce bear who was the best PR guy out there as far as I know you know and and a bunch of other randoms oh Eric Whiteford who was the coolest [ __ ] marketing guy I've ever met and really really fun to work with he he was at EA well besides Jan Don of course um anyway OG so yeah it was good it was good but it was really well attended and it was really you know a really nice venue too in San Francisco the game speeds events are great they do the LA one in May San Francisco was at now and then they're doing another one in LA in December before the game awards show because the game awards show films like December 12th or something like that so I'm going to go to that one but I love it Crest to your point the value I get out of those is like the networking kind of outside the talks I'm also conferenced out in that I feel like number one is I listen to podcast at 2x speed and so when people talk in real life it's really slow and then and then the other thing is

like yeah no one's saying anything anymore and I think that's what people come to us for and what it's what people reach out and they're like you guys are actually saying things you have takes you give away information and thank you for doing that because every you know all these other places aren't doing that so anyway we're not in the Shell section yet Jen hold your horses what I me what like Shilling our oh that was just all right oh that was the seg sorry sorry that was the seg no that was the segue no I mean not sorry that was just like authentic of what people are telling me all right so let's chill um the shooter podcast was great guys Phil Adam credit to Adam for putting it together initiating it um really awesome to talk to Devon from newu who bought some really interesting data since they started tracking ma from Co which saw a very sharp decline in shooter ma a shocking decline besides was on Marathon yeah 40% decline

it started at Co you remember newu data is looking at you know usually tier one tier two Western markets like there's some things that I think is important to contextualize but the overall result is still pretty shocking we also don't have a control group what was the entire game industry down in terms of players during the same period like there's a little more little more arm I think you got to put into this one but we do we try to do that on the podcast I think was really great and I think the other thing we really started talking about is like what comes after Battle Royale you know what is ultimately going to punch through is extraction shooter we spend time on that we T spend time on like just some generalized FPS stuff it was a really fun conversation and I'm already getting a lot of positive feedback so credit to Adam Devon and Chris for coming on that was a blast check it out yeah definitely look it on Spotify or YouTube because it was such a nerdy podcast that you guys are just showing like basically a document and it's like it's a presentation mode the line Looks steeper in person oh Devon No my only feedback is that like I didn't really feel like you guys got to like concise conclusions at the end like

it would have been nice to say like where are the opportunities or is it a completely red ocean for multiplayer Shooters I mean we talked about large sub genre stuff I mean we we talked about like large scale Shooters as a potential there there's action going on in sub genres I think there's something there Fair Fair Point Fair Point like it seemed like single player Shooters which you guys were really discussing was the only like takeaway of where opportunities might be like yeah that was my impression anyway from from listening to the whole thing but you guys did a good job yeah I would say that the the 40% decrease is a scary thing right where you know like if it's not a growing Market there there are GNA be very few opportunities this GNA they also took fortnite out of it as well which was you know one of the black hole games of that's not growing either though as as a trend line that's not been looking great the one shooter that that on mobile that I've been especially looking at has been Gina freefire and how that has collapsed like if you put in those numbers cuz that was the biggest you know in terms of an audience

it probably was the biggest shooter game it really collapsed and there's like different hypothesis is it because they released the second skew because they had the free fire and then they released the Max and then like those two together are actually much smaller than before or is it the co hit is it the combination of both like hit those you know numbers into app magic or sensor Tower whatever you're using and you'll see a very interesting graph that that will generate a lot of different hypothesis but it would be interesting to hear from Gina what happened Gina did I talked to agreement they they did move some a lot of people onto alternative platforms purchases okay so that kind of offsets some of the weakness but man I got in a big discussion with someone about that at the first conference for like you know what I say stuff on this podcast is look it's just an opinion and I'm trying to be as objective as possible but like the point is is that these [ __ ] off platform stores are not helping user acquisition so it's still a [ __ ] leak bucket so

if a game is doing well in a third party store that doesn't mean the game is doing well right so like all these games that are suffering right now because of idfa it's like dude third party stores will help your margin they're not going to help your [ __ ] Revenue growth you know period end of sentence like it's just fact right almost as I say it's my opinion but like Anyway you've heard of heroic laps 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 Breck 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 liveops and save a big chunk of cheese all with heroic [Music] Labs we got a story here coming in about IA we get you triggered a little bit later so it's good let's warm you up I have just a small show for Alex copian and Aaron marquinn is this like a Spanish name anyways Alex was the founder of Bungie they the two are you know Legends of the industry and they invited me on the podcast so I wanted to give the shout out just for their podcast fourth curtain they have a lot of very interesting guests not me but the other guests are very very interesting that are coming in most of them are like really senior people in the industry and and talk about like developing some of the old games and they run the show in a very like offthe cough way there's no questions in advance they kind of go anywhere they want I happened to join just after like a food poisoning and it was it was a fun fun little conversation but was I was pretty weak and then I was like what the

[ __ ] I was saying these things but anyways this podcast and I'm disappointed that you went in half ass because they did one with Frank Jabo that was like really fascinating to get you know his whole history and so you're on with like The Heavy Hitters of the industry and you showed up like that dude what are you doing I don't know do you you play when it's time to play you don't take off days so I promised that I'm going to come in I was sick that's fine we play still so so it is what it is all right I got some [ __ ] Corrections from the mocking session maybe these are additions but you know obviously Phillip could not replicate my dulet tones of my voice but his ideas were spot the [ __ ] on he said exactly what I'm going to say regarding the shutdown of the triaa team blue team from Netflix my take as I've said many times on this podcast is that never made any [ __ ] sense for them to build a triaa game why would they ever even start a project

like that it does not fit the Netflix platform I've said it a [ __ ] gazillion times on the podcast so no surprise on my point but there's one other thing I want to say because there are some people talking about upset the fact that these guys lost their jobs like this amazing 30 person team lost their jobs it's like unfair whatever Netflix made this investment made this promise and they didn't deliver and look I totally agree everyone's job loss is [ __ ] tragic you know I absolutely no love for these big tech companies [ __ ] around with game developers right having said that having said that these folks did a deal with the devil right they knew what they were getting themselves into and any objective person would have said that this G this doesn't even make any sense for Netflix right and on top of that these guys were getting like $600,000 [ __ ] salaries or more probably million dollar salaries for two or three years for projects that clearly never made any [ __ ] sense right they should have known better right they should have known better and

set their expectations accordingly and I am absolutely certain that these folks will be fine this team was actually 100% amazing right in terms of like the quality of the team so they'll be good they they're all good right but you did a deal with the devil and you got burnt you know that's that's what I would say you know if you asked me but now they'll move on to something else they got to figure out what to do next right this is like you know 2.0 of Netflix games speak king of 2.0 apple is working on a new Apple App Store dedicated to games and this was a rumor from 9 to-5 Mac so it was not confirmed or no details were provided at all so it's like really hard to know but but on the surface this sounds like a positive right potentially a way for actually you to gain Discovery and gain Organics and have something dedicated to gaming you know that I think as you mentioned last week I don't know if you mocked me on this one is like this is the [ __ ] they should have done like 12 [ __ ] years

ago right like to justify this 30% right they should have been building out these tools and Technologies to help game Publishers back then I think Google actually tried it and failed miserably back then as well but it's [ __ ] too late for this right really it's [ __ ] too late I mean at the end of the day but the thing is that bugs me about this is that knowing Apple the way I know apple or that we all know Apple they're [ __ ] up to something dude they are [ __ ] up to something right this is not for the best interest of Publishers this is just not right they have constantly screwed over Publishers time and time again from requirements like metal way back in the day the design of the App Store in 16 of course idfa you know like gut tells me that that literally they are up to something right this is not going to end well so here's what I think this is all complete [ __ ] speculation by the way just to be clear right one they may be trying to Plate authorities right to show that they're providing services towards games to justify the 30%

[ __ ] so it's some kind of thing regarding the legal things that they're admired in across the world and trying to Plate those [ __ ] people right two they're trying to say this is the even the worst this conspiracy series 101 right they're trying to separate games from apps right in some way so they can justify the 30% for games and maybe reduce the feed for apps right so maybe that will help kind of eliminate some of like the legal issues that they're having brought more broadly right across the ecosystem and then also the the third thing is they're trying another way to [ __ ] over Facebook and app Loven and all these other UA channels right because that was the whole point of idfa to begin with right is to just to screw over and get more control over the store and they've completely lost it again right because fingerprintings replaced idfa and now everyone's like driving more and more traffic to the store so by some using like some separate store function or whatever ever maybe they'll be with the block fingerprinting or

Force using SC something crazy right or sell more advertising for Apple right what I do know is that they do not have Gaming's interests at heart right I talked to dozens of people during the last three weeks at these conferences and not one person knew anything about this [ __ ] right that can't be good right if they're not actually trying to bring Publishers into the fold to discuss how this new thing focus on G ging is going to benefit them they're up to no [ __ ] good they're up to no good so we'll see if anything happens here we'll see what it matters but it can't be good that's all I got to say they're gonna have to keep making changes you're right because I imagine by the way the Google epic Google deal that one's on hold Google has to open up the Google Play Store so all of that you know Google appealed it was supposed to go into effect November 1st so as expected that's on hold but I I would imagine apple is still looking

out to say uh oh like if that is going forward there might be blowback on us we we continue to need to make changes and evolve maybe that's what's going on to your point but we'll see we'll see all right so moving on the switch two so we're going to continue with rumors the switch two may be announced this week as a established Nintendo Insider who is a Brazilian journalist who has Scoops all the time saw some chatter that they might announce the switch to before the earnings call which is on November 5th and they're looking to do that to get ahead of the news coming out of it that people are going to want to understand when that's coming so Nintendo has only announced that they will announce the switch successor before the end of their fiscal which is March 31st so by the way I don't I don't know if we clued into this but there was they're going to announce it not

that they were going to launch it and so have we kind of parsed that apart before or did we think that it was like coming in Spring of next year no it's it's coming September October next year I mean that that's my source so generally when they do this kind of preemptive announcement on a hardware thing that means that things are not looking good on the earning side right so like they want people to get excited about something they honestly they should not be announcing the switch into early next year you know when it's launching because they don't want to torpedo sales of the existing switch during holiday which is their big selling season right because people will anticipate the coming out so this could mean that that something does not look good in their next earnings report if they're trying to do this right before it right that generally what this means but I could be wrong and they could not be it's possible they won't even announce anything but I'm looking forward to the announcement I think everyone's pretty excited about it from my who I talked to so we will see yeah no I think this is going to be be the one of the key things to to help

the industry in the back half of next year you know for console and hardcore Gamers it's GTA 6 for kids and families it's switched to problem it only helps Nintendo right doesn't help anybody else but Nintendo right correct correct but it is good for the industry all right so our next story is from an app charge report um they did a thorough analysis of top grossing charts and found that on average Crush you're going to love this 7 2% of top grossing games operate web shops or web stores so they have researched and track which of the games have web stores many were not easy to find and often Publishers only invite a select group of VIP players all of the top 20 grossing Social Casino games have web stores I mean I don't we should not be shocked by this so huge games in H1 2024 direct to Consumer Revenue accounted for 10% of total revenue up from 4.2% a year prior exceeding

their expectations Phil I think you pulled some of this information was this shocking to you no I think this affirms what we've known which is and and I think this is the interesting piece is the genre level differences so casual match was like 30% Web Store adoption or Social Casino forx much higher and this goes back to the theory that web store adoption is directly tied to the returns to having discounted spend so if you're in a Forex game remember your return per dollar of spend is higher if you go to the web shop you're getting more hard currency or usually more power per unit of spend and so there's a competitive advantage to spending and I would argue it's something very similar in Social Casino you're seeing the same effect as driving hide option Social Casino I think that the bigger component of Social Casino however is that when you just spend a lot of money just you know a small percentage effect has a large nominal value so if you have you know like for instance if you went on to like EA subscription platform if I bought a lot of games I wouldn't have to buy a lot of games anymore because I'd be on the platform and so when you have these really high LTDs even just like a you

know 10% extra bank for your buck goes a really long way so I'm I'm not surprised you know I really do wonder if there are genre limits to each of the web store adoptions but at Le this is one data point suggesting that may be the case I don't even know so if if casual games can get can get higher can they get to 80% I I find it really hard to jig those things together this makes sense you're maintaining margin you're you're basically taking a game that's been successful and you are just basically sucking more margin out of it and could be making it more profit in theory I guess on on a percentage basis but overall this doesn't solve your UA problem all right moving on to an update from Roblox so they have bolstered their child safety measures so changes include kid aged 13 and under having to have parental permission to use the game's chat features those nine and under need to get permission to play games that have moderate violent or crude humor which is pretty much every game on Roblox but that's fine it also

is introducing parental accounts that oversee what kids are up to on the platform so this is likely in response to the Hindenburg article right Crest yeah I mean most certainly like these po activities they were doing already right so they're just showcasing them on PR just to you know to make people think that they're doing something no it this is pr11 right this is Crisis comms 101 is how do we get ahead of any big regulatory reaction that might be coming to get us and you know so I mean I feel bad for them because they're in this endless game of like internet creeper whack themal where they're just trying to constantly do things to keep down the naughty folks on these platforms I was actually talking to some folks and they're like Jen you wouldn't believe it is like this constant stream of just how do you keep 9 million kids from talking about penis this whole day on the sh

like like that's what you know it's like we have to make these tools that do these things it's awful but Chris when you talked about it last week you were really astute to say that investors have factored in all of these things to the share price like they know that there are alt accounts and their Bots they know that there are internet creepers that are doing naughty things but their trust and safety team is been at it and going at this and trying to fix this for a long time and so this might be the only Hindenburg hit piece that didn't actually land a hit because their stock it went down for a minute and then came right back up and it doesn't seem to change you know these guys don't give up this is just phase one right there's probably phase two and phase three of hit pieces against Roblox and I think they have other things they could go after pretty easily honestly but misrepresentation of the data I think they will continue to pound and I think if they looked at the monetization the egregious aggressive monetization geared towards kids I think

that's like a winner too so I think if they go after that kind of thing you know they're not going to give up it's not just a one hit and they're done they they keep coming after them so I think they're invested but maybe they will lose this one maybe to your point that the the shareholders already know these risks and are willing to take it because yeah you're right the stock hasn't moved all that much I've been following robblox for a little bit just from like a business perspective I tried to play it but you know Ro was too difficult like not too difficult but just too enduring to play these games it was not for me but just looking at the performance of the business I I forgot what was the number but they practically spend no money on marketing like zero and when you look at their growth curves like you put it in like the downloads and and revenue on mobile it's just shooting up so and I kind of bit some graphs through it and was looking like between 2022 towards the end of 24 every single country except one had triple digit growth at least both in revenue

and downloads and that one was turkey that banned roblocks like past month yeah but but like you name it every country is growing so it's the most insane business that you can see and and trying to like there are a lot of ugc platforms that are of course you know being pitched and being built and this and that but I look at these numbers I'm like they're growing like crazy they have insane social graph the revenue is booming their downloads are booming and they're not spending on marketing how are you going to challenge this company they spend a little bit but you're right they don't spend a lot because you you you kind of can't and the culture of the company too is very engineering product L and there's not that many folks marketing and you don't really need to when you build in all of these great social features right and that's what they're doubling down on when you look at where they're investing their time for creators a lot of it's on social features it's in their uh yearly report of 20 three it says ROBLOX Corporation spent approximately $ 38.6 million on

Advertising [ __ ] that's insanely low that's like a mid-tier merge game like top you know maybe 10th yeah yeah as a percentage of Revenue like insanely and and then the other thing to look at too is like how much of that is on developer marketing versus consumer or player marketing that's the other interesting piece all right Mishka you have some stories all right Investments St Investments m&a so I'll start with trigger and Crest by a press release from anti-hero Studios so they recently secured and undisclosed some in precede funding so prece meaning they have the team they get the first money in the team has actually been set up six months ago so now they found their investors seems like there was a little bit of a break between when they got the investment and when they started so they started earlier this team is comprised of former supercell employees

you know solid group I can't say anything about that and they are basically according to them creating games worth sharing and their strategies to do marketing that makes the games Word of Mouth worthy and memorable in big ways and so I took a couple of quotes from the article by their CEO Bryce lville St Martin it's beautiful name so quote number one I believe idfa is a positive turn for the industry as a whole because it forces game developers to refocus on creating games that are worth people's time and attention and there was like a lot of conversation thef slack and one person commented on this gouging both your eyes out is a positive turn because it forces you to sharpen your other senses possibly leading to heightened sense of smell it's a good one I had to but I'm not going to name L said but it's it was I thought it's so funny then other quotes are players do not want to engage with games that are not worth playing or

remembering yeah no [ __ ] that's you know yes true and then the third one there's plenty but I believe brand strategy is blue ocean in Mobile gaming but only a few teams will be able to take advantage of it and anti-hero will be the first and most important one and then of course they go on explaining that they will use user acquisition the traditional methods but they don't want to rely on it so I did invite the CEO directly on the podcast because I think this is such a positive news in know like a negative take on idfa and I want it it's like an anti-rest take on idfa and I was like come on in let's have a little bit of a conversation and I think also supercell did not invest into the team and I don't know if it's because supercell decided not to invest per se in this team but I think also that supercell might be done with these like preed Investments because they have this new CFO they're becoming a big company there's no more time to give like $500,000 to a team like it's such a distraction when you're building you

know a multi-billion Dollar business so I think it's I almost took it as a positive sign that they're not like spreading these many tickets around and and hopefully focusing on big Acquisitions coming in the future with that new CFO and new strategy so that's what I took out of it I didn't take it that supercell didn't trust them so anyway what do you think they normally invest in all of their e ex employees yeah yeah supercell like normally like they have such an insanely broad portfolio of like small teams that it seems really weird it's almost like they're like a VC fund like an early investor and again it's great that they're spreading seeds around and helping these companies but in fact like it is not supercell is not the type of an organization that has resources to spare they can't say like oh you know you're a lead designer and brawl Stars why don't you help the team of five over there to you know figure some system out like it doesn't make any

sense it doesn't make any sense for them to waste time on teams that have left the company like [ __ ] that [ __ ] off well no that's quite typical for Riot for example invests quite often to to people who leave but yeah know I I've heard things even like when they have of course offsides with their team where they bring them together and you know I've heard that sometimes like even the supercell employees don't come to these offsides that are for the invest teams like where the all the marketers are meeting and so forth because they're just so freaking busy building this amazing company and that's you know they don't have time to share so that's what I've heard but anyways I think it's a good sign that they are notest if they're not if they are that's also a good sign the whole pieces here is that you need to build social games that Delight the consumer and that are worth sharing right that I mean that's his thesis right which this will circumvent the current UA Arbitrage distribution system that's solely focused on games that make [ __ ] tons of money that can afford you a right but this guy clearly doesn't

understand the current mobile landscape at all right I mean like honestly this is like like the institutionalized by Supercell type thing or Riot or blizzard that you can go out and just make a game that's amazing and beautiful and wonderful and that people will come type notion right you only can do that if you're [ __ ] supercell right I mean because supercell is supercell you know that's why all these these games get so many downloads right and they fail so miserably when they don't work right supercell so I understand this sentiment right but this is not the business of mobile gaming it's just not right I mean idfa certainly didn't make things better it made things a ship ton worse right so the cost of bringing games to Market has gone up like there's no doubt about that right so monetization has gone up to account for it and that means even less creative and social experiences that work in this market right and if you look at the top games since idfa they're all monetizing at insane levels right so Monopoly go at $22 RPI in the west white

out survival last war Diablo mortal honai star wheel even [ __ ] triple dot 13 to5 $19 RPI range right that's the only games that have been available to scale in the last few years so and I would argue that the only thing really creative about these games this is going to be controversial particularly the like white out survival last war is these [ __ ] casual [ __ ] that they're getting people to bring into the these games right so they're just actually adding this casual layer to [ __ ] bamboozle people to get into the game maybe Diablo mortal fits his thesis I mean it is s kind of casual but the endgame is egregious aggressive monetization that's geared towards the only smallest of smallest hardcore users and I don't even know if it really has that many social features as in some of the other games so yeah I don't know actually none of these games are very particularly social right not by his definition anyway maybe Monopoly go with this Revenge mechanic but does that fit

his sensibilities of social I don't know I don't think so but maybe but anyway I do agree his idea of creating social games is a good way of building out Organics I mean it's possible Right but the games won't survive unless it has deep monetization if you can't scale using UAA you're [ __ ] [ __ ] okay I mean this let be real here right that ship sailed even before idfa apocalypse right like you could scale a game unless it had good monetization back then so Philip black any comments from the monetization expert yeah Phil I don't really know what he means by brand strategy here I'd like to interrogate that because does he really mean brand strategy like is he gonna go off and run tv ads or is he really mean IP here is he just gonna build strong IP because that's what I think he really wants to say and I don't know I just saw Squad Busters go out and fail with an IP thesis like just completely fall in its face it has supposed to have all of supercell's Ip like the Barbarian is supposed suppos to be the most recognizable IP element in Mobile gaming

and it couldn't drive a [ __ ] ton of downloads not only that that's something that it's an outcome of having a successful game it's it's not what gave it a successful game to begin with it's iconic as a result of being a success I think causation goes in the opposite Arrow so I think there's just questions for him I mean it's just a press release I'd love to understand more but what what does he mean by brand what actually does this translate in terms of a concrete strategy but this is a response to that Eric though I think you have to at least give him credit this is a response to what you're saying in terms of idfa like paid Performance Marketing is not going to get easier is what you keep echoing on this podcast and I agree with you this is a counter thesis maybe we should try this direction yeah I hope he's right to some degree but like nothing in the market has proven out his thesis period Well I mean he was just talk about Roblox I mean yeah that's that's one example I think stumble guys is another interesting one that was the one that I did think about stumble guys was actually a really good good but that didn't monetize at all right like that was just a monetize on ads and they're

they're impr a social phenomenon but it doesn't monetize you can't spend UA against something like that right no you can't I think that's that's one of the things that you lose when you again I don't really love the brand performance dichotomy but like when it comes to Paya it's very easy to insert a dollar and get a dollar out it's a machine it's a machine that you can really choose how often you want to press and how hard you want to press and I don't think brand has the amount of fine tuning and that relationship so again to your point Eric like it's hard to scale these things like if paybacks are good insert more money you know until paybacks are not good brand it doesn't it's it's not the same yeah and if you look at the top 100 games they're all pay to win they all have high monetization they're high monetization they can be spent against right and so it's like I don't even know if there's an example of one of his games that would be in the top 100 right of a game that's social and nature and that brand is driving you here's your acquisition like Organics I mean how how many people are going to complain about Organics right like it's like there is no [ __ ]

Organics anymore maybe the new app game app store from Apple is going to solve all our [ __ ] problems right we're gonna have Organics of the yin-yang you know like hey let's do this right [ __ ] you that's not happening it's not happening seriously let's get real I find I find it interesting it's kind of like the the riot scenario where or blizzard where we had people who left blizzard only to set up like a mini blizzard next in in irine and we had like people leaving riot to build a MOA like in LA and you're like like excuse me and then in this case it kind of came to my mind like you're you're leaving supercell to build supercell right by the way a to buy and buy like for the I can't believe after all this [ __ ] and trash talking I've said about mobas over the years right one data point was missing from my entire analysis on why mobas don't work in the west both PC console and mobile for that matter is that I heard specifically that Riot's

game League of Legends only has 2% or 3% of its Revenue coming from North America right two or three% dude that is [ __ ] mice nuts dude no wonder none of these games are successful in the west if that's really all that Riot is driving revenue from that game the biggest game on the planet for mobas dude that that is completely [ __ ] [ __ ] right like there is no market for MOBA in the west if that's the case right I mean that's nuts I can't believe I didn't know this all this time after talking so much [ __ ] right but I I got wild R right no regular [ __ ] the HD PC franchise is 3% from the no [ __ ] way I don't believe it I don't believe it there's no way that I heard it from three different people I can't believe it right [ __ ] riot people come out and tell me that I'm wrong on this one right well we got Jen Jen Jim just just you're not do a sign no like like listen what the [ __ ]

what the why are you even based in Sant Monica then that's the wrong place to be there's a lot to unpack I think we can all agree that China and Korea are the massive amounts of Revenue that drive that game the reason why it's in Santa Monica is obviously that's where it started but for some reason this is why league is a unicorn and right is a unicorn is the Western ability to make that game that happens to resonate in the East is like one of the only games where that works right because we always talk about how Eastern games are made for the Eastern audience and Western games are made for the Western but for some reason the Western influence on a MOA that is successful in the East is what is a secret sauce for that and yeah the western part of the business for League of Legends is not nearly what it is in especially China and Korea which are the dominant

markets again like I I did not know this I I I mean I obviously knew China and Korea were huge but not I thought for some reason that was a lot bigger in West and no wonder like Esports didn't work out in the west also right there's still a lot of people because it the game is so huge but yes from a relative sense there's like enough success in those little bit of esport pockets for it to make sense but they are declining and they can't run it profitably is the is the problem this changes so much like if this is a true fact then like this recontextualizes like the spark ball MOBA I don't know if you've seen that the one that's been floating around as a thesis that's been around for a while the other the Space Odyssey one that came out recently the they had the soccer element there's super viive coming out we've talked about that a little bit which is from the Leal leg team if you're telling me that like 97% of Revenue I don't know can we say it's from China you know I guess Japan might be part of this too Korea Korea and and China yeah and and sea yeah I mean that

completely would change my approach to developing those games if I if I knew that fact I mean I would do all my communications why are you communicating in English like that's your first mistake don't make a [ __ ] MOA dude don't ever make a MOBA like what even saying stop making mobas if you're making a MOA now just stop stop and do something else right it's crazy thought was so anyway all right let's move on okay uh the creative Studios team from Destiny maker Bungie is moving under the PlayStation Studios umbrella this move will form the foundation for Sony interactive entertainment's live service B oh my God is this from like three years ago what am I reading here did you put this in C what did I say what did I say the minute that Bungie starts reporting to Sony brass the [ __ ] game is over Dude the gig is up like it is over for Bungie like there's no way that Bungie Sur survives this right like Sony interactive entertainment you know the

the Bastion of Excellence for Life Services you know like this is [ __ ] absolutely [ __ ] this is not good news not good news at all thank you very much and I said this months and months and once the acquisition happened I knew this was going to happen this is not good good news not at all so what they did say that was good for them is Marathon I don't even know so they had an announcement I think probably to counteract this announcement that marathon is going to have both PVE and PVP elements and its development has seen aggressive changes based on the feedback from play testers and content creators the next update for Marathon is expected mid 2025 with a possible release window of 26 it's is two years too late look over here oh my god dude the fact that it's too early to show you can't show a [ __ ] video you know like of gameplay or anything come on man besides was director of product on Marathon so you should definitely listen

to it and Adam T was involved as well yeah we yeah product guy though product guy prod guy different Adam sorry go ahead all right son is shutting down firewalk Studios the maker of the recent shooter Concord and uh neon koi which is a mobile FPS game that is unreleased R to those two Studios this is Bish's old studio just to be clear so so we're not going to comment on this one for obvious reasons his his Studio died with Savage games this is a new what are you talking about oh yeah this is a new the Phoenix From the Ashes none of these news are fun when people are getting laid off and this is among them of course like do contact me DM like I've I had a lot of developers reach out and I think 38 people are looking for a job at the moment in Berlin and in Helsinki very talented programmers artists and designers very good expertise so I have the lists I've been helping out been uh

sending them to relevant Studios that are making action games for sure also some sad news potentially I was reading about this I and and it you know as with most companies in China it's difficult to tell what's going on tensent admits key changes at the top of the company but rebuffs layoff and restructuring reports from game industry. Biz so if anyone has any insights we'd love to hear more it sounded like they were doing some consolidations but maybe not so anyone with rumors did you have you guys heard anything I got nothing I can't believe I have nothing on this one but I'll ask around and see what's happening but yeah but you have to keep in mind like the one thing I do know and I heard about was that Tei really has had one success this entire time right it's been Call of Duty mobile everything else has been kind of a train wreck so it's like really I think they do fight for the golden spatula which is TFT in China which crushes it I'm sorry in the

west oh in the west west the Western teams of te sorry I so it's like they haven't been firing in all cylinders but like I anyway I if anybody has any intel let me let us know i' be interested to know what what's really happening was it the light speed was the other 10 cents to right yeah because they set up an LA office right am I correct with that yeah [Music] okay step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exola provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition maned subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global success [Music]

this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps fer the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps flyer where your app's potential meets performance all right games Phil yes we have news that the shooter strin Nova has hit 400,000 steam wish lists they also have a separate pre-registration campaign on their website which is at 3.8 million the reason I highlight this is because I I think the a16z crowd must

be foaming at the mouth this is a waiu third person shooter on Steam that you can wish list this is a thesis that I think everyone's just kicking themselves so they didn't go after fast enough but you play as anime girl characters and a third person shooter and they have a mechanic where you can become almost like a 2d figure to dodge bullets it's from ID dream Sky it's a Chinese company they of course have 10cent money they were listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange they mostly have been publishing Western games in China and this is one of their first original releases although they they have one or two others recently and it is already showing a strong interest of jand we were just talking about PVP Shooters on that panel I'm Keen to see how this one plays out I think a lot of people are kicking themselves that they didn't tackle this thesis quicker of going with a waifu shooter game how different is this from nikai like art style it's not as aggressive in certain elements I would argue certain elements got it it's much more moderate so it's not as sexualized right

I would argue this could probably hit a relatively stronger female split in terms of potentially yeah CU yeah okay nikai is Korean right Japanese okay also we have some news that today CCP games has launched Eve Galaxy Quest it is a forx title developed by ccp's Shanghai studio just on a note as we're talking a lot about chines ches developers and forax agent of Empires which we were talking about last week is already up to 3.5 million cumulative downloads last time we talked about it was 1 million so it's had a huge launch of course the slope is really Steep and downward sloping so I would assume that there's a lot of brand marketing spend here but I think it goes back to something Joseph Kim mentioned on his podcast a couple months ago when he was talking about 10cent that sometimes Chinese developers find that there's this right half of the CPI curve where you spend so much money that cpis actually tend decrease and I sometimes wonder if tensen is playing playing a similar strategy when it comes

to some of their game launches but we're seeing a lot of activity with Forex and with China and I would remember there's a there's a command and Conquer one that I think has been announced to so they're kind of going through this like very strange IP graveyard for forx ideas yeah this kind of was Blast from the Past for me because I remember like back in 2018 I was working at roio and we acquired play Raven which is a Helsinki based studio and they were making a 4X game for CCP and that was kind of like not the the reason for acquisition but but the engine that they build around that but I was looking through this CCP 4X game and I believe this is a blockchain game right oh I don't think this is the blockchain one no no this is this isn't the blockchain one this is mobile are you sure fairly confident okay because that was aw correction next week right CU there was like see there was this Awakening and they raised $40 million no this is this Forex but the Awakening was also Forex but it also had like a blockchain side of it because it kind of made it was the only blockchain game that to me made sense because you're

harvesting and you're going to sell it and you're the space exploration stuff anyways so we'll see next week maybe in Corrections maybe not sounds sounds good one update from I would argue is probably you could consider the the top story over the last year the second top story I think Monopoly go is in there but uh dungeon Fighter online and is actually started to slow down in terms of Revenue when we look at sensor Tower numbers but just to give you context so so far it has $88 Revenue per download that is that is not a mispronunciation $88 Revenue per download and I'm looking at iOS only just to control for our normal China store Quagmire where we don't get Android tracking for a good portion of the downloads it's only done 7.5 million downloads according to sensor Tower which I was shocked by so part of this is just a large amount of spend on a very small base and again it is a large amount of Spun spend and if you just look at iOS it's done $700 million 7 $ million in six months and what I was really just surprised to learn is how

quickly it started to flatten so the cumulative Revenue was impressive but we look at downloads and we compet against let's say honor of Kings it's not even close when it comes to volume I mean we're talking about you know on a weekly basis certainly under 100,000 downloads which is I don't know is is this something that's sustainable Eric like I was just surprised to see this in my opinion look like it's sputtering a little bit this quickly after launch I mean it's number one number two on the App Store so it's kind of hard for them to predict what it's actually doing you know what I mean so I mean just I was I try to bring it up the BL yeah I mean it's coming down a bit it just yeah it's it's hard to fault it just like Monopoly go there there are a lot of new games coming out in China right there's a lot been a lot more approvals and so maybe there's more competition like going after the same audience because again this game is not one of those like typical like shark fin type games right this is the game that lasts forever I mean has a on PC so maybe they're just kind of losing incremental players to others um yeah

wasn't Squad musters approved for China is that Gonna Save it yeah that'll do it game that makes no money yeah perfect all right so here's a topic I wanted to talk about I saw that Ric who is part of Zenga so they soft launched a Barbie game and so we finally get to see I don't know if you all remember but this a while back when this announcement came out around the time of the Barbie movie it was hey Zena's going to do kind of an older targeted merge game and we're going to see if that audience kind of works and so it's now live in the UK um Laura played it and sent me a video so basically it's Travel Town meets the bar bip so when you think about it too it's also a little bit like that decorative feature with a little bit of story with a little bit of merge and and and so here's the challenge for them is when they I think when they greenl this deal

it was on the heat of the movie but they don't have the movie rights so they don't have Margo Robbie they don't have liveaction they just have like traditional toy rights and this category in the genre targets an older female audience so part of the magic of the movie was the Nostalgia that brought back all of these women who really love dip and love the idea and the and the message of the Barbie movie and they were like oh okay like let's figure out how to do that however when you see the visuals that are if you're watching you can see some of the visuals the visuals are really what you would Target and use if you were going after the younger audience or the younger girl audience and to say something really Boomer danger danger Will Robinson I think they have a complete IP creative mismatch for what they are trying to do with this audience and they're losing the magic of the idea that I think thought they had which is how do you go and be nostalgic and grab older women who remember this

brand with a play pattern and a game genre that monetizes really well with an older female audience what's also crazy and I don't know the details behind this maybe it's a UK thing the game is listed as an age rating of 17 plus I think they're using ad monetization and maybe that's why they did that although when I look at Travel Town and other games they're in the US store they're not rated that way so I I don't know how you have like a a young child at IP and you're like oh but it's 17 plus the brain has a ton of potential if somebody had asked me I would have done like a 50s mid-century OG Barbie look and style like actually that was part of the opening of the movie and really positioned it towards that audience and you know like we're not your daughter's Barbie game but when you see this in the App Store I don't know what older woman's going to be like o this is for me because it it just doesn't look like so again this goes to what I said at the beginning of the show is if anyone is

looking to bring a toy IP into video games and especially targeting a different audience please call me I can help you I've worked on all of these things I'm I'm just I'm just really sad oh so I just wanted to compare what this is versus some other platforms so there's there's a mobile game that does really well and then there's uh Roblox experience so on mobile Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures does you know about you know $900,000 lows in a million dollars over the last 30 days the Barbie Greenhouse Tycoon inside of Roblox is the number three branded game with 18.8 million monthly visits just absolutely insane when you compare lifetime to Lifetime the mobile game for dreamhouse has been out for six years 138 million downloads on Roblox 300 plus million visits in about one year so in one year Barbie on Roblox is is like 2x that of the best Barbie game over the last six years time spent per

session on mobile is 7 Minutes Roblox has double that at 14 minutes and congrats to game fam you know Joe is a huge fan of the show and often on our podcast so they're the one who does the Barbie Roblox game ah it's just super crazy to think about how the Ro again to our earlier conversation how Roblox can really own and and drive that younger audience the opportunity here was really to go after an older audience and I just don't think they did that with the creative so Jen that was a brilliant analysis that was a brilliant anal I could I I can't I can't even I can't even add anything to that genen the only thing I'll just add data points to what you've already said when it comes to the male split female split and also the average age from sensor Tower they have a lot of really powerful features on the platform we look at Royal match Candy Crush and garden Scapes and I didn't look at merch unfortunately and I do wonder if that ski is a little bit younger but 64 % female 68% female 73% female wow so it's it's everything that

we knew it's just great to see another data point supporting it when it comes to average age now this this is what really hit hit home Royal match Candy Crush Garden Scapes 41 39 39 so it is exactly the demo we've been imagining forever it's the same Yony demos I'm sure you remember Jen I mean that's what that's what got dice with Ellen across the line rest in peace and so so it's just it's just great to see that the data says the same thing and I would also point out this is the same problem have with my little Pony when they tried to do that IP they didn't make it for for the the pony Bros whatever they call them the bronies they didn't even do anything for the bronies there wasn't any wink wink and especially with Barbie you know a lot of the Barbie movie was about all the different versions of Barbie throughout the years you know they they had like you know one AR I think they had pregnant Barbie but it was weird like imagine you could collect those there's just something here that really makes sense and it was astonishing when you brought up those numbers gen in terms of Dream House Adventures yeah you know pulling in around 300 million downloads and for people aren't familiar and Eric I think you've into this this is by budge which just kind of they kind of do kids games they're share wary so it's kind of like

okay there's a section of the game you can't access you pay five bucks you get in dream house is one of the ones where they started to introduce more free-to-play mechanics they do have a hard currency so it's the only one that they've started to move in terms of monetization so it's interesting that both downloads are up when it's monetizing higher although I assume they're off doing paid stuff they have a subscription they have that too which I think is very interesting and you know only 60 Cent Revenue per download but the other the other budget games are are far worse yeah I agree well mobile was only about 140 downloads the 300 million was Roblox yeah it's a vanity metric yeah I understand I mean listen we have what we're working with and with the sensor Tower and data AI numbers on age and demo please take that with a grain of salt because of idfa deprecation and things like that but I would say everything we have in consumer insights that I have seen especially after working on form in games like this is that is what it is right like a 40 plus woman who is the audience skewing towards female although you know I think

if Laura were here she would say that a lot of the puzzle games are a little bit more 5050 these days but Barbie is not going to attract a male audience let's let's just be super clear about that how does it work with an IP rights because you have the movie rights and then you have the Mattel like the toy brand yeah and so you would have to get both in order to do so so when the deal is done with Mattel then they only can give you the toy and that's why it looks so childish and they would have had it done with like whoever published that Paramount or or some other one yeah but they they can choose to do more of an adult themed you know aesthetic if they chose to they don't have to use the movie assets to do that correct and Matel would have said yes to that or like how does this work like like it's a cooperation when you have such a strong brand holder and they like no we actually wanted to make it like toys because we also want to sell toys we can send them the comments that you made about Monopoly going scop give your or person who licensed your IP more flexibility to go out and [ __ ] execute this is this is your message

control C control V so they could have done whatever they wanted right and so if I were them I would have come up with three or four different Creative Concepts and tested those with players beforehand and and said hey we want to do the and maybe they did I don't know maybe they did and they found that this worked I I just my spidey sense says no and and by the way they don't need the movie and I don't think they should have used more go Robbie inside of the game it would have been limiting it would have been felt outdated and so I think the right approach like I said would have been to go after the library of creative that has existed for that brand for over 50 years and gone back into the archives and pulled out and done like a nostalgic play but you know you know it is what it is and we'll see we'll keep an eye on their numbers I'll send you the video of the gameplay but it's like you know a lot of these games are cartoony and perhaps that's what they were like oh look at love and& pies and travel town and gossip Harbor

and it's cartoony and these things and by doing that though it looks like a kids game well back to a game that actually does attract a male audience so we can finish this podcast Call of Duty six release the biggest game of the year absolutely massive and reviews are in they're relatively positive like 84 85 somewhere around there really on Steam it's like 58% don't listen to [ __ ] steam they're a bunch of wiers no don't listen to steam steam ISC it's cancer it's Reddit it's awful it's awful those are those are Chinese votes probably so you can't can't take that Jesus oh boy the Metacritic is around 84 by all measures the game is pretty good the single player is actually really well done this time around as well and then the zombie mode and regular you know online modes are good I've been playing a little bit unfortunately not a lot but I'm going to get through definitely through the single player and play a little multiplayer but yeah the

game is good it's going to do well for the bmth that is Activision Blizzard [ __ ] Microsoft Bethesda whatever it is anyway that's all I got on that one what about the subscription thing Cris like I I so wanted to hear your rant I mean we don't probably know enough yet but there was articles around you know people estimating how many subscriptions they think this was going to drive how what the cannibalization of you know downloads that this was going to be no no no I mean look it's cannibalistic by definition almost right like regardless how many people they get to the subscribers get through the subscriptions it's just a straight loss I think to revenue they'd be generating but the fact that it's on every platform kind of offsets that to some degree but it's such a big release it's really the only big release in holiday so it doesn't really has no competition so it'll be fine but I don't think this going to be a big win that Microsoft

needs to change the landscape of console I mean they're still getting [ __ ] destroyed right I mean they're getting annihilated the cycle I want to be clear on this point right like they are losing so badly there's no way they can recover right this cycle the way how much they're losing on the hardware side so it's a disaster for them but Call of Duty will sell well on PlayStation on PC and we'll do whatever it does for Xbox I am shitfaced every time I visit this franchise it is an NBA case study in How to Build and Grow franchise Bobby has not only Built the supply side he got these factories going he got these factories going so you have cascading Studios releasing every single year which is [ __ ] brilliant and I was always under the hypothesis that you're like cating Demand with each release but it turns out each release grew demand there's actually like kind of this this connective you know tissue effect and I think you're really seeing with this game and with the last one is that he it's every problem that we faced in

Battlefield which is that you have all these different theaters of War people get attached to a particular theater of war and then you really scatter your player base across a bunch of different titles once they choose a preference so Battlefield one Battlefield 5 Battlefield 2042 all the time we see players logging into this game even now they're distributed and you see this in I'm sure Call of Duties numbers is that they're still playing different versions of the game you're not monetizing your base as well as you could be and so how do we change that and I think that's one thing that they've been trying to solve and so when you launch this game you are launching the Call of Duty app like it was last year that's why when you look at the you know we're looking at the steam chart right now you know there's Just Call of Duty we we can't separate out the different titles because it's a single app and when you go into the interface I mean it sounds like an executive designed it when you look at the ux but you can see the thesis here right right it looks like an exe it's a Netflix UI you can go into different experiences across the Call of Duty platform remember last year you could transfer guns over that's not the case this year you are starting fresh they've been trying to unify a lot of these things there's a Call of Duty engine that they're trying to unify things

around like why do I continue to build the same [ __ ] store over and over again this was a thing I heard all the time at EA why are we building the same [ __ ] store over and over again and so they're unifying things on the supply side they're unifying things on the front end and they're using it as a platform right so now Call of Duty isn't just an arena shooter it's a platform for a bunch of first-person shooter experiences so they added Battle Royale they tried to add extraction shooter which didn't go very well as I think we can tell now they're back to thinking about co-op with zombies in this version there's a single player which they always satiates some demand and they also remember they they also tried their hand at Large Scale battles there were 64 player battles recently so they're taking swipes at everyone but they realize that Call of Duty is really a platform for a variety of experiences now and just like hats off to Bobby for like executing against the strategy over 20 years it's been over 20 years this franchise has been pumping and he's built it and he's built it and he's built it and I think you're really starting to see you know that executive PowerPoint slide come to fruition and a unified experience I don't know if this is a good idea to be frank it's very hard to pull this off it requires a lot

on the management to be able to to get this stuff to work I think we know all about what happened with a unified frostbite engine but by and large I'm just astonished at this franchise continuing to evolve rather than you know any sort of Revolution it's always been about Evolution what happened to Battlefield boy how much how much time do we got yeah a lot of things happen to Battlefield can you say this in a few words because I remember like it used to be Battlefield and Call of Duty yeah here's what I here would be my argument for what what happened with Battlefield there was variety of things just to be clear but when you look at the amount of headcount and Call of Duty it's very reflective in their content output you think back to like what was dice's highest retaining title without question it was Battlefield 4 Battlefield one sold the most amount of cop copies it was the only time we beat Call of Duty Battlefield 4 held on to the strongest retentive effect and it's pretty obvious why is that we had a bunch of [ __ ] we had a bunch of [ __ ] that you could customize and that you could ultimately play around with we ramp up the RPG aspect to a really high degree and then you think about the amount of content we shipped in 2042 if you just compare

across the same vectors how many guns there are how many Maps there are it's radically different the RPG element has been minimized so I think in many ways Battlefield is a subject of underinvestment by EA malinvestment by EA and I Star Wars that was Big Star Wars took up there there was a period of time where dice was shipping I think it was you know six games over like a four-year period remember we shipped Battlefield one we shipped Mirror's Edge we shipped uh Battlefield 2 we shipped Battlefield 5 I mean it was a really short period of time where dice was shipping a [ __ ] ton of titles that really hurt the studio in a really large regard and we didn't have we didn't have the head count that Call of Duty had I mean look at they have 3,000 people working on the [ __ ] franchise now it's insane [ __ ] they had lost the game well before that Battlefield yeah the sweds just mismanaged that platform right they didn't build a platform they they stayed true to their own vision of what a shooter should be and that was not where the market moved right what do you think we got wrong on the gameplay side I think we've always always stuck true to what Battlefield is what made it success ironically well all right this is a long conversation why do we do this

next time on the next watch next shooter panel so thank you everybody for listening mega long episode come back next week when the crew will be here I'm not anyways thank you bye later 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 member of the deconstructor of fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening