TWIG #309: EA’s AI problems, Monopoly GO’s decline, and Pokémon Pocket’s success

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to deconstructor of fun this weekend games 309 where we read all the news and then tell you about it so that you don't have to do that so here's what we have on today's episode we're gonna go back on a topic about EA and AI which is going to be fun I can't wait to hear Chris's rant on this game IND award season is starting so we have a few nominations and some awards that have already gotten out triaa devs are doing a startup the right way question mark fun story there Pokemon TCG is taking off m&a earnings uh lot to get to so hi everyone I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at beta hat and Jade Inferno and today it's just three of us so first this is Eric Crest consultant extraordinaire goser Consulting screaming at the clouds hi I'm Phil cook baby we got a lot coming

out today oh my God all right maybe I'm going to revoke I'm revoking this I thought you would like have your everything down you guys would be able to I didn't even plan for this I really thought you were going to take this away from us I'll think about something clever next year next week let's do it that next time and you know piy short you know whatever you want to say all right first I wanted to start off wishing some birthday wishes so wow is turning 20 and halflife 2 is 20 like two 20y olds crest what did you give wow for their birthday present like how many hundreds of dollars 20 years of subscribing and very little free I didn't get any hardly any free because my blizzard friends are not very generous well you have to give them something it's their birthday so you needed to give them something look one of my good friends who I've known since Kabam days is finally in his dream job in World of Warcraft Brian deante and I sent him a note saying Hey where's my $90 Mount I I must have lost it in the

mail right cuz they have a $90 Mount out there this big like [ __ ] dinosaur looking thing and I'm like where's my $90 Mount dude where is it at he's like I know you had something to do with this thing he's like yes I did and no you're not getting it so it's like thank you very much I have to go out and buy it myself but this is the guy we met who has the giant sword in his office that was the heaviest thing I couldn't I've ever he is the true EST legit nerd SL super smart guy I have ever met and he is like so into this stuff him and his wife both are just big huge Gamers and like I've never met someone like so credible in in the space and he was almost singly in charge of the success of Marvel concepts of Champions because he was like Drop shipped him and his wife up in Vancouver with a team that really had no idea what they were doing they built an amazing game but had no idea how to monetize it and he basically copied The Best of The Rage of bahamama

type Puzzle and Dragons style monetization for that game and and I think without him it would probably wouldn't have been a a success So This Guy's super legit so he's doing God's work at blizzard right now oh that's [Music] amazing 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 live op 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 all right let me do a a couple of quick shills Mishka is living it up at slush I mean there's more pictures of supper parties and thank God I didn't get a picture of sauna because that would be too much but too triggering too triggering for Miss Jen I was expecting it you know because we've seen him you know at all these other places dude every year every year he throws that picture out there of like naked men like jumping into the [ __ ] cold water it's like dude no one wants to see that stop it all right one more shill is exola has their new winter quarterly Deep dive report out so go to the website and download that they always do uh a good job of pulling a bunch of stuff together so Chris you have this in the correction section tell us why this is more of feedback right and there's nothing more than I like about then feedback my whole

stick is that I try to be controversial so I get feedback so I understand things better and so this is feedback from someone close to this issue about the chief strategy officer giving the AI game development strategy update at the investor relations inv day investor day sorry so aka the AI gaming Zar as we have labeled him his his point was that this whole thing was very intentional right creating a separate initiative like outside of the studio org made sure that it wasn't a threat to the studios themselves which in essence which makes a lot of sense because AI game development is a completely separate initiative within EA and it will not impact people in the studios is kind of the contention here so to put like someone like vinston Pella as I suggested up there talking about AI gel development could actually send the wrong message to the studios that you will be replaced right ultimately

and that is a little bit frightening to the legions of developers at EA so I totally see that point that makes a lot of sense I didn't think of it that way this seems like a very safe way of communicating new AI development will not threaten the developers at EA I think that's very smart I'll be honest however however I was waiting I was waiting for the pivot here we are I agree with this message AI in gaming potentially has the ability to create a new platform a tool to create unique experiences that can attract and Delight new audiences bring up new business models and grow the interactive Market I agree I agree with the message however I strenuously object to the messenger like why would you choose some McKenzie guy with the equivalent of a third grade education in gaming I.E four years of experience no matter how smart and handsome and his 15% BMI there are hundreds of more qualified people

outside of Studios to talk about this [ __ ] [ __ ] right and back in the day we had a whole group that was dedicated to this [ __ ] right Bing Gordon the chief creative officer Hillman who had been there for like decades like he's the type of person that could go out there and talk about it so maybe it's not M Studio leadership but creative people within the organization that actually could discuss this that have context for these type of things which is actual game development right so it is far more appropriate to do that than to bring out some guy from McKenzie you know the destroyer of Studios that is my point however I will take his point and I think it's very very smart of what he they tried to do anyway just the wrong messenger there we go yes I'm sticking with it no I think that's fair but I think what it's really interesting what you're saying though which is if a studio person had said it would it be more threatening they've

already had this stuff like they've had seed they've had this division inside of EA what I actually don't remember this what tell me so the search for Extraordinary experiences division boy if there's anything more corporate than that and the the thing is though they're actually really [ __ ] cool like seed they are in Stockholm they're one floor below dice but they definitely have their own outfit and their own organization and they're basically like a pure research organization I still remember going down to the seat offices I love talking to them and they were doing like for instance generative voices really early on where they would sign lifetime actor rights away and you could you know make a voice and whatever emotion you wanted to go through a transcript but this was like machine learning before it got rebranded into AI way back in the day like this was in llms and it just has never found its way into production so I'm not quite sure why he feels the need to spend up a whole new separate AI division rather than leading on seed which is already doing this is confusing 100% that makes total sense like have some someone from that group I didn't even know that group existed frankly cuz back in the day it was probably you know Hillman running around like his head cut off giving

presentations all around the studio orb right but like yeah like someone like that someone legit like I mean even someone like super nerdy that like is so into it like he can't even see through the you know anyway through his glasses right but like to have this like slick Lily guy from McKenzie up there talking about this [ __ ] still is bothering me and it's bother me nothing personal against this guy I want to be clear like evidently he's a good guy but it's just it's so dumb credibil yeah no I understand what you're saying is you need somebody with the credibility to be able to stand up there and authentically discuss a topic that is relevant has a relevant experience and can bridge the gap between creative and technology in a way that makes sense but then again in EA's defense it is such a quagmire of politics and [ __ ] at EA right you can't get anything done the fact that he got this type of speech up there and to begin with is kind of a shocking given how controversial it could be how who knows how much bullshit's going on but behind the scenes of this stuff all

right let's move on all right here we go let's talk about some of the game industry Awards coming it's almost time for us to do our Awards I think we do that in January where we do our own version and a lot of it makes fun of everything we've talked about over the years so we'll get there so Jeff Key's game awards is coming and actually they film in LA in a couple weeks so their nominations are out I just pulled the top game of the year because why not so Astro Boy batro do I say batro right Phil is that how you say the poker game black myth Wukong Elden ring shadow of the entry Final Fantasy 7 rebirth and a game I have never heard of metaphor what the [ __ ] is this thing metaphor I don't even know how to say the ghost of Ethan is gonna pop out of this podcast if you continue I'm sorry uh you know I have a little bit of geek triaa game credibility but I don't know what the [ __ ] this is so the thing that is however important is to note that everyone's an uproar because they let in

DLC and they let in a remake and everyone's like oh how my God how can we do that because they everyone thinks Elden ring is gonna win and overtake black Smith after boy apparently is like this heartwarming lovely thing that has no chance against these other games okay go ahead I think the fact is that they're running out of things to choose based upon like there's just not enough games coming out so they kind of have to do remakes and DLC and stuff like that most likely I actually don't really have much objection to this list per se I guess Final Fantasy 7 rebirth is so dumb because that game didn't do well either you well it it was a nightmare it was such a huge Miss for them commercial success is never really like a determinant of these things it makes no sense to me so is it really that confusing that they wouldn't choose based on gross revenue for an awards category like that doesn't seem that far of a proposition to me but this is the Academy Award like this is about creativity and this is why we created

our own award show because nobody it feels like takes into account commercial success and creative success fair enough fair enough I think it's worth a coefficient but I think it's totally have other criteria for sure agree with you which is so I mean then we get to the best mobile game right which is the one category they have and we've talked about this endlessly that the show is for AAA PC console folks so the nom are AFK Journey batro Pokemon trading card pocket so the TCG game that just came out wethering waves and Zena Zone zero yeah you're right there wasn't anything really released this year that did exceptionally well withering Raves was a disaster right that didn't do well at all AFK journey is struggling right I mean it's gone down to nothing now Pockets holding up man Pockets holding up we'll talk about Pokemon TCG later hold your horses because that's probably

going to get it because it also has Brand recognition poor little batro who you know like isn't that one developer who made that game on Steam and then they ported it over it's a paid download too we forget like it's old school you got to pay money to get that thing it's crazy there's no big releases this year they're all from late last year and last year these games have just grown I think it's tough to do like releases for mobile generally speaking because it takes so long to scale these games but yeah apparently the window is from November of 23 because I my buddy's at meta and so he does marketing for the Asgard 2 like VR game and they also the Batman VR game is nominated I was like congrats he's like I don't even remember when we launch because it was so long ago it was released so it it has a pretty long window Okay Google also announced their best lineup so they had a bunch of awards I'm just going to pull the top one which was best and Android game of 24 the one I wanted to talk

about was best multiplayer Squad Busters one Squad Busters create multiplayer game Phil Right is a good multiplayer game again it's not always about the dollar bills for Awards pick up and play went to eggy party that's a [ __ ] weird choice that is a [ __ ] weird choice I maybe broaden the demographic because it's so successful in China get everyone excited oh maybe it's worldwide yeah yeah best ongoing honai star rail I mean interesting it wasn't ginin that it was honai and then best story solo leveling arise so a lot of these you know more Eastern oriented story based RPGs now let's get into oh yeah let me do this quick intro uh friend of the Pod Alice P so she's at Ruckus and so I you know I try to follow what she's up to because she's a rockstar and they just announced a 19 $ million in funding to develop a third

person Cooperative RPG shooter centered on Suburban Invasion theme founded in 2021 by industry veterans including CEO Paul Sage known for his work on the Borderlands franchise the Texas space Studio aims to offer a blend of style humor action featuring a large washer of playable characters and custom customizable weapons the game will support up to four player co-op in an evolving world with plans for continuous up States and emergent content so here's what I actually liked about this like we [ __ ] on AAA devs doing a startup and getting money so couple things one is this approach is different than what we're hearing from everyone else they had a lean team of 14 people over 12 months who made a a vertical slice and a great prototype to prove their concept before they went and asked for their big money and that seed round was 5.5 million which is you know it's it's a lot of money but not for the tripa folks

and I loved how in the press release they talked about what they were doing in specifics that was different they actually like talked about their gameplay even though they didn't show you any actual visuals and personally I love the co-op game so congrats I thought this was a this was like finally some good news in a world of things that we normally [ __ ] on yeah I think they definitely are under like the startup type mentality like you compare this to something like believer which I mean I'm sure they're they have like 20 people making a million dollars right and you know they're just like cashing checks constantly all of light speed's money yeah this is clearly not a light speed joint it's actually transcend I think was the early investor in it which I do like those guys so it'll be interesting to see what they come up with and see if they do a publishing strategy and find a publisher for the last like as a strategic round for their last thing or they tried to self-publish I know a little bit too much about this so because I talked to Alex a lot so I'm not kind of like comment on the game itself

but I think it's going to be an interesting shot on goal like it seems like they're doing it the the right way as I see it anyway versus how some of these other guys are just not really startups anymore right they're just basically well-funded you know AAA Studios so we'll see there's one point I wanted to ask you about so a lot of this new funding came from a Chinese investor so I thought that that strategy was kind of unique that they went over and raised a lot of this new round from a Chinese investor thoughts on that as like a potential for companies I'll have to think about that because the thing is that I don't know if this type of gameplay is going to have much relevance in China like from the the visuals I've seen anyway thought the strategy was interesting well who is the who's the investor uh it's in the article I forgot and by the way I'm gonna actually I'm gonna interview Alex I'm gonna do a pod with her we're gonna talk in a couple of

weeks so if you have any questions you want me to ask on that pod we will cover it she just has a great story and I think a lot of younger folks would really appreciate hearing you know hey you know chis you and I are dinosaurs Phil's actually not ironically he just has a dinosaur soul but you know how are the young pups doing it these days did you hit 30 yet Sil like please I don't want to talk about it all right fine oh you did I thought you just die after 30 or you just keep turning 30 again isn't that how it works wait do you color your beard is that why you're do I no I do not color my beard Mr Rogan over there clearly I'm not using Rogan look at this at this it's just a this five head you know Jesus come on get out of here all right oh that's a good one all right so another friend of the Pod because it's we're going to just shill our friends today and they're all busy at slush you know with Mishka and and SAA and by the way they don't use the in

front of son so I'm trying to be very European in my talking about this so play Ventures has closed its third gaming Fund Raising 140 million games be reported that play Ventures will continue investing in early stage game companies however this round will focus on mobile free-to-play games infrastructure and AI enhanced gaming tools since the closure of its third round in June of 23 play Ventures has made eight Investments including an AI startup Beyond filled in go to like some of their parties and stuff and like misname the DJ at their party I actually saw them recently they came for an offsite in Stockholm they took the booze cruise it's like this huge moment in maturing in the nordics you do this booze cruise from Al sinki to Stockholm do it overnight it's like a whole thing there's documentaries on it it's where you really grow up and they took the booze cruise and I got to hang out with them and I got some socks so Props to them and congrats socks that's yeah that's socks do we need deconstructor of fun socks is that what on our website next okay got

it um I'm the one thing I'll say about this is I'm interested that it wasn't more geared towards playable apps which is one of the things that they've talked about previously and when we pulled some data AI numbers at the beginning of the year it was just remarkable how the share of apps has increased as a share of total IP spend on the App Store like it's becoming the case that non-gaming apps could overtake games in terms of Ip share they could become the majority in like the next couple years here that's a scary thought to me but it is growing and I'm interested to see what pops out of it this whole idea of play blops very interesting to me yeah all right I will just say that I think play Ventures is kind of the ogs they're kind of doing it the right way I think they have the same like Mutual incentives for their startups I think these guys are the right size and the right scale in order to make the right type of investments in gaming as you know things are challenging from that perspective but uh I like Harry I like Anton I haven't talked to him in a while I should give him a call all these guys kind of know what they're doing very pragmatic so

yeah I did the that VC 101 podcast and Anton was on and he's just I mean all of the other guys were great too but Anton is is is super sharp and I like their kind of sniper approach versus the shotgun approach you know of like pick some some real good winners and get behind them all right who wants to do mini clip mini clip has acquired Cipher based mobile games developer easy bra from sweden-based gaming giant embracer one of our favorites for $1.2 billion billion embracer group said they expected easy brain to reach revenue of $287 million and AD justed EA I Eric if you can tell us the difference between IID Dak and iida of 116 million and FY 2425 but here is the key fact everyone get really excited about this I know Eric will the sale of easybrain to mini clip is going to allow embracer to cover its remaining debt almost in from $1.2 billion down to 45 million I

don't know are you really ready to give a comeback story of the year to to Lars yet Eric well what's interesting is that easy brain was one of the best Acquisitions they actually made over the years the one that made the most sense from a revenue and profit contribution this is like their best asset right and so the question is what do they have left now right and so I did a little digging and I'm probably missing something here but I think I'm getting the big ones is that so from a AAA perspective they have Crystal Dynamics and idos Montreal deep silver and THQ Nordic I think right crystal Dynamic and idos Montreal are working on they canceled the DSX so they lost 100 folks there but they're looking probably like working on the Lord of the Rings game and maybe another Tomb Raider Deep Silver did not do well with Dead Island 2 right and so they have Kingdom Come Deliverance in

25 not sure about that game th crew nor is working on Gothic remake I don't know what that's all about but all these games are kind of in my opinion really not aligned with the market so it's like in some ways first of all it's a positive that they got rid of all their debt right that's good right that that's like tabul laasa [ __ ] right so they start from scratch but this is the lineup of games that they have coming out in the next like 18 to 20 2 4 months right how really aligned with the market is it right but with with these type of companies and are so beat up and then also the market as it is it's like sometimes people just want to believe right and so maybe he can spin a story but I think ultimately most of this stuff is going to disappoint if I were to say and then on the transaction itself this was a far better and more expensive transaction much better comp than we talked about last week with the

other acquisition that happened so you know 10x iida is good not great actually it's not that good honestly but it's decent right so much much much better than the last time we spoke about this so I don't know overall I think it's good and bad for embracer I think they start over and we'll see what happens we'll see if they can pull it off and make some games that people want to buy right which is what they're Str that's what of the problem with them to begin with is they didn't have the right teams so clean house I don't know the answer to this I don't know who owns the Tomb Raider license but I did hear that GM maybe MGM so Amazon's making a show I know that there's a show in development and Sophie Turner is listed as the potential new lur coft and Sophie Turner is Sansa from Game of Thrones all right and kind of excited to hear about that you know I I don't know well you remember Amazon games signed the publishing rights for Crystal Dynamics for the next Tomb Raider game too so they got on Prime video and they're

going to have the game too so that model sucks right yeah for for for sure bracer yeah like I so that's why I was wondering who owned the rights because and by the way you are GNA bet this whole company on some trans media [ __ ] is that what you're suggesting like that's a good thing no no no I I I'm not suggesting that more of I just wanted to talk about I'm excited for that show and for Sansa starkk to be just one of the right Eric because they they announced they're spending off to the three companies right they're going to have Middle Earth Enterprises and the other things right but the but the Standalone like AAA gaming company that is relevant to me is this right okay I don't give a [ __ ] about asmod right it's like the board games dude the super nerdy board games for like the Germans that are sitting there in their basement you know the [ __ ] that dude I don't care about made quite a bit of money it was like one of the best parts no I dude it's a sorry it's a great business but it's not interesting it's not you know high growth it's not like part of

interactive at all it's just some like completely nonsense that they bought for cash flow honestly it's kind of working in their favor now with with with the absolute disaster that this company is because they can actually pay back some of the debt get the debt refinance Etc but anyway that's beside the point the fact is it was no long never relevant it was not something that was like you know strategic or they could leverage and make games out of it's [ __ ] dude it's too Niche and too dorky right for mainstream and so it never made sense like sorry now you get be going on on this this stuff has been over overdone so anyway we'll see what happens all right I didn't really like Sansa Stark I didn't think she was a particularly good actress to be honest okay let's stop here what are you talking about she was incredible the emotional Journey she had to go on at the end when she I mean spoilers for Game of Thrones but like with little finger that transformation was awesome so good she yeah no I mean she she did a lot with what she had to work with and

other stuff she's been in has been really amazing I don't know I like X-Men dark Phoenix was awesome really five stars she I don't know we watching a different person what are we talking about here he's just trolling I think but I I don't know I okay moving on [ __ ] you guys like I think she's interesting and I'm very excited to see [Music] her this podcast is brought to you by appsflyer in today's Digital World understanding your abst Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter apps lier 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 fer 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 flyer where your app's potential reach performance step into the future of game

monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exela provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition manage subscriptions and streamline Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success let's talk about oh ex rers go for it Phil so super viive which is the Battle Royale is MOBA I'm not quite sure if that's how they describe it that is in Early Access open Beta they've been running play tests I think for around the last year and so we have the first numbers rolling in again this is only you know really in the last 48 hours we're seeing like a ton of interesting stuff they hit around 49 on the steam top PSU charts and you can tell that they pushed a little bit when it comes

to investing in uh twitch viewership so they had an initial Spike and right now at 20,000 PSU Peak PSU per day that's not a like a terrible number for a game that's growing I don't know what's happening on the monetization side I haven't had a chance to play this I'm really excited to whenever I've kind of been skeptical of the idea of a mooba as we usually are on this podcast another mooba particularly in the West after that shocking shocking League of Legends Revelation about Revenue distribution stop it and but see here's the thing I've been thinking about and we'll talk about this with Pokemon go if you can get distribution in China as a back door through Steam without having to go through all the approvals I think that's a really interesting Avenue for a game like this and I'm really curious to see whether or not they can take advantage of like doing more things in China can they hire Chinese influencers you know on on a bite dance platform I I hope they're doing a ton of localization for this but whenever I push back on mobas everyone who's worked at Riot maybe including yourself says no between these guys and the ones that did uh Space Odyssey the ones that did the the soccer MOA like this is the OG team this is the

veteran team like you know do not doubt these guys yeah so this is Joe Tong so Joe Tong was head of League of Legends for many years many of the folks on the team left with him to Theory craft which is the company that now has released super viive and you are very astute in calling out China so you know because we know that mobas are really dominant in China and Korea those are the two big places perhaps the marketing team should be trying to figure out how to subtly Market there for the gray Market that is the steam version of this so I like that strategy good good call out Phil I don't know I haven't played or seen much of this yet I didn't know again maybe I'm just not in the right marketing Vibe for this no idea that they went out into open Beta so we should yeah I am downloading it now I am actually downloading a [ __ ] MOBA so I will it I tune in next week for the the crest

review I'm I'm ready I will throw myself on the grenade of the Moa and see what's what I'll play for like five minutes no get my ass handed to me no yeah all right so we have two more releases you know I just wanted to mention this week we'll check back in next week but I would say get your app stores going because capao from habby is finally out in the United States it was out earlier in a lot of Eastern countries it's now available for download I was getting it go I only have about one day in it and our chero 2 is out globally as well both from habby so HBY they are light and [ __ ] on fire right now two of them yeah I'm very excited to see how they pull this off I'm sure you know internal messaging and internal coms it's a crazy place right there to do two games at once but best of luck to them and we'll be checking up soon go chupacabra chupacabra I think that's a different animal I know I I don't know what a copper I can't even say that's why they say c I can't say either one so anyway let's keep going because I can't

talk unfortunate name really Pokemon go surges past hundred million in 17 or excuse me Pokemon Trading Card Game pocket surges past $100 million in 17 days let's look at the numbers for this there's a bunch of different breakdowns I think there's a ton of really cool subplots in this since we last checked into this game I think the last time we checked in it was about like 40 million worldwide so it's been on a really good place the first thing we could take a look at I'm really looking at the game through two different lenses the first one is looking at the regional distribution of the game so we can look at all of the different Pokemon games Pokemon go Pokemon Masters Pokemon TCG pocket and Pokemon unite and we kind of Benchmark them in day since launch and then we can split that by the United States and Japan and we do that because the United States and Japan are just such important markets for these games and such important markets for the IP and so when we just kind of look at the daily numbers since launch Pokémon go obviously is by far and away crushed every single game that's come before it in terms of Pokemon IP it's far Head and

Shoulders above every other single game we look at tcg pocket the thing that's been really interesting is that it's had a decline in US downloads over time in fact that's a lot of what's driving the download decline after the initial burst it was really driven by the United States having a really really large up uptick in the beginning then declining but Japan has been super super steady when it comes to Pokemon TCG pocket it just is cranking out I think around 30,000 downloads uh per day and not only that but we look at Revenue per download TCG pocket when you compare the Japanese version of the game to how it's doing in the United States the difference in Revenue per download is absolutely astonishing and not only that it's far Head and Shoulders above all the other games including Pokemon go so while on the download side it's a little bit closer to the other Pokemon games when we look at the first 21 days since launch it's done 5.2 million downloads in the United States compared to 48 million downloads for Pokemon go 20 21 days through launch but that's still higher than Pokemon unite which is at

3.6 million so the United States it's tracking above Pokemon unite but well below Pokemon go in Japan it's tracking very close to Pokemon unite so Pokemon unite did 1.6 million downloads in Japan for the first 21st days and Pokemon TCG pocket did 1.5 some very interesting differences between the different countries so it's it appears to be downloading very similar to other Pokemon games very similar to Pokemon unite but its Revenue per download is so much higher in Japan that it's driving a crazy amount of Revenue and not only that because they're able to have steady Japanese acquisition they're able to bring in a [ __ ] ton of money and it's I think it kept at around five million daily revenue it's looking really good right now its Revenue isn't quite growing it's it's a small growth there's a lot of synical Trends within a week but I'm really interested to see in whether or not they'll be able to stack daily active customers over time so if they're keeping install volume constant and they're continuing to add players who pay into the game over time the share of Dau that is a customer should increase and so when they go out and they run liveops events revenue revenue

should Spike and I would say the only counter thesis to this is that it's a meta collection game and this is something that we were talking about last week that's really frustrated me is that first of all the meta collection game is really [ __ ] good I I do want to give them credit for like they've built in a lot of really cool mechanics that I don't think a lot of other games took advantage of particularly stuff like magic gathering about doing like 50 million different versions of the cards having cards in different languages you know holographic having the star system there's a lot they've done to build depth into meta collection game but the question is is like does a meta collection game have the same sort of tail or legs that these other games have with a more solid core game playay because remember they stripped down a lot of the core gameplay from the original trading card game and what I don't understand is why they couldn't have done this with the old version of the game and when I talked to someone at at direwolf the one that didn't have IP that's been on the App Store forever they told me that they never got a clear answer from Nintendo about why they wouldn't let them turn on IP which was very strange to me I'm a little bearish about the long-term prospects of the game I made a really stupid bet that I

think it could do less than 50 million in the United States in 2024 I might eow on that other people have been betting a billion dollars I bet 500 million I'm trying to get a betting Market going on this with poly Market I've been trying to set this up forever and like I really want to get betting markets for game numbers going and it looks like there may be interest in this I I really think this would be an absolute blast uh to get going and to get some bets on the board don't move to the us cuz then you can't participate no I'm I I put on my Swedish flag for this one dude this is like the biggest no-brainer in gaming ever right like why hasn't this been done before right to this level right I but I Nintendo it's tell me actually I want you I want you to be clear on this they announced this deal with DNA or Dena whatever the [ __ ] you want to call it DNA 2015 right that's how long they've been working with DNA and the game freak announcement was starting in 2019 to be clear Pokemon is not Nintendo I want to make 100% clear Pokemon is Game Freak right Nintendo owns like I think 30% 25 to 30% of game freak but

they run their own show right but this game is obvious for mobile right and obviously for the gruesome practice of loot boxes right so anyway in that time that they've done the deal with DNA is that they've done Pokemon Masters ex with the game freak guys meet me Tomo which is off the store now Super Mario run which was a disaster Fire Emblem Heroes was like the best game that they actually built in collaboration with DNA I don't think they actually DNA actually built the game at the time Animal Crossing which is was a disaster uh Mario Kart disaster so anyway so they finally come out with a game that actually makes sense for mobile after all this time I think with the only exception of Fire Emblem Heroes but they should have made this like 10 12 years ago but whatever it is here I'm happy with that I think the question really is is how long can they actually monetize this audience are they doing enough in terms of spend depth for character

development Etc or liveops new characters Etc I guess I'm have the same worry as Phil here but it seems like an obvious obvious hit so good for them and it's good for DNA because I haven't really seen much lately Reddit and all of these communities have come out supporting Pokemon TCG pocket which is basically just a loot box [ __ ] opening simulator right now and like I just want to call out the amount of horeshit that we see from these over and over again like all it's all just Vibes based anti- monetization as soon as it comes in a rapper that they like and that they have an emotional connection to it's like ah [ __ ] it loot boxes it's fine right valve never gets criticism for this other people don't get criticism for this Pokemon everyone seems to love this including mainstream Outlets despite the fact it's just a gotcha Simulator the other thing I want to say is if you're sucking dinner right now you got to be looking at this and saying like oh [ __ ] this is what happens when we have loot boxes your monetization velocity is through the [ __ ] roof yeah take that we've been talking about this since [ __ ] that game released

dude like that's all they needed to do was do some loot box thing and that game would have been a [ __ ] huge success right yeah yeah good good game plus loot box equals Bank dude that would have made it worth the [ __ ] 100 million [ __ ] that Griffin threw in that game that company like come on well Phil you were like you know like you were like oh look at all the great like things they did to the cards I was like are you talking about Marvel snap or are you talking about Pokemon like that's what Marvel snap did but they didn't monetize that cool treatment of the cards no I actually think Pokemon go goes even farther than Marvel snap I think Marvel snap did a lot of things right I think a lot of their problems was that they built Rarity into frame breaking if you remember that's when the card added more 3D effects but the variants don't really have Rarity associated with them and the variants are cool right they do have an emotional connection because you can have a variant that's like a comic book cover right you can do these moments and times that really connect with people but they have a hard time pricing that I mean they've been trying to increase the price of the variant but it doesn't have Rarity it's just it's not as well the

Vari is not is is cosmetic it's not true power related that that is [ __ ] that's that's not the way the world works right well how does it work in Pokemon so you mean you still can pay for power in some sense I mean a lot of people think of ccgs as horizontal whereas you know one card isn't necessarily better than the other but yeah you can just sit here and buy packs and and collect a bunch of cards that's totally possible I mean the problem is you couldn't really do that Marvel snap right there wasn't a direct way to get cards in that that way you had to kind of move up your frame breaking and then you had to move up your collection level and then you go through the ocean anigan like the problem is that Marvel snap has been trying to solve this distribution problem forever is like when I have new cards how do I distribute them to players and this was ass solt problem you put them in a new pack you put them in a new series and they've been just adding all these Band-Aids for like the last couple years I mean they have like these tokens now they have these other Spotlight keys I mean it's been kind of like a design nightmare right now I think people just forget like loot boxes put aside all of the other things we could talk about in terms of like ization velocity the other thing it solves is like you don't have to build a

direct store right you can build in just like this very single push a button get thing out you can save a lot on the production side and it just makes it easy to distribute things from a design perspective too loot boxes for the win tldr Loot boxes all right so next topic is here we go I can't wait scop Le Monopoly go kicks off a crossplatform campaign it's called friendship pays with celebrities will Ferell who is the voice of Mr Monopoly Jason mimoa Kiki Palmer and Chris Pratt oh my God make it St so the campaign the campaign has 20 plus original videos including two 45 second television spots that it all started on November 18th so it'll be TV streaming social and digital platforms clearly very high production values on the spot it's a blend of CG and liveaction where where you know the you know all the celebrities are inside the

ad lots of humor lots of Monopoly so what are your predictions Phil I'm not going to [ __ ] on this I'm not going to [ __ ] on this believe it or not so I would look at look the way I always I would always argue is like what's the model here right and I think one of the things that's been interesting is like this idea of creative LTV so when you go out and you spend Capital against building a creative ultimately it isn't just the you know the lowering of the cpis against average which is one way can think about it that the LT delivers but it also delivers that over time like we were uh listening in one of the play Ventures prior conferences to someone from Bond and they worked on merge Mansions I think and they did a lot of work on driving the creative for that game and one of the things they commented on is that creative has continued to provide dividends for them over time like it's one of the best performing creatives even a year after it's been made so like could these liveaction more expensive advertisements deliver LTV over time could you know against the average that's the way I'd look at it you know do I think this particular one is going to do that I don't know I would say you know again I

looked into a particular TV ad campaign for a game called dice with Ellen once where they actually at scopely they actually did try to do this the right way with the diff and diff run it in some test markets and of course we found that like there wasn't any uplift and then we continued the campaign as we always do but at least we did the handwavy stuff so like I'm totally open all this stuff my my only argument has been like what's the model here and I think like this is how you'd start to think about it like look at a game of war right remember those K Upton ads like that persisted outside of the initial period which they paid or that continued to deliver dividends like that might be another way to think about it I don't think the results of that were okay I think that's go back to 2018 App Store yeah that that was it's a different era the different era and I don't think that resulted in like longevity at all right I mean those games ended up dying and to be fair those tie-in were much deeper too right remember she was on like the homepage I'd say that's the one thing that when you see things like this I hope that there's deeper integration into the game in some way yeah what's crystal clear

here is they've run out of profitable UA spent right I mean that ass I mean when you're doing this kind of [ __ ] dude like UA spend is no longer profitable thank you matate and Jo Joe like you're right now you're right they are no longer profitable on their UA spend full stop right if they're starting to do this [ __ ] right this type of like broad advertising for mobile just seems Bly but I mean when you're out of ways of user acquisition then that maybe they can bring more people into the game and I guess most importantly and I think what it did even back then with game of war and some of the other stuff is it re-engages his audiences right it gives him an excuse to go back into the game right which will be quantifiable and in theory if they can start seeing more people come in come back to the game because of these these huge spending for these huge stars but this is where I get out of my element and we have to default the Jen as to the wisdom of this type of spend I

mean what how about this let Jen let me ask you your question before you start waxing poetic about you know brand advertising is like what are other options to spend 30 20 3040 million whatever it's costing for this particular opportunity cost is a foreign concept it's like that's I didn't want to even bring up the word opportunity cost because then everyone's her hair is g to go in blaze right so what other things could she be doing what other things could they be doing Miss Jen besides burning money on these type of things I don't know why you think it's automatically burning money all right well here's what I will say is I don't think the UA is completely unprofitable I think that they are encountering saturation and they are encountering costs that are going up and you have to kind of shake things up to at this point in time and they by the way they knew this was coming and we were looking at their numbers we saw

this going down we know that they were running TV and test markets you know exactly what you said Phil by the way it's the same team Phil that you know did a lot of the things that we did back then you know Jim's in charge of this and one of the best creative marketers out there so what I will say is if they are doing this now they're doing it at the right time and they' have probably done some tests to know that this is getting some sort of response whether it was in some of the test markets whether you know it was something else so the other thing that I like about what they did here that is very different than what Squad Busters did is that when they did this campaign they did a [ __ ] ton of creative so not only is it the fancy ad it's not just cutdowns but they went and I don't know if you watched some of the other videos but they went and did like individual spots with the celebrities they did it in the style of the channel That resonates on so if it's going on Tik Tok the creative looks like a Tik Tok ad it's going on Instagram it looks

like an Instagram and so when they sign the celebrities it's not just that one thing there's like 20 or 30 to their point pieces of creative that can go more broadly now the thing that they have to do that I don't know if they did yet I haven't looked into this is feels right you have to integrate it into the game or else it doesn't make sense the other thing that I probably would do is space out how the creative comes to Market and not do all of it at once which is I'm sure they're probably doing this as well so you have a sustained campaign that can keep you going when you can test this creative and when you can have this new type of creative that can resonate inside of your performance by the way if I know them they probably sign the rights to do this creative inside of performance advertising you are doing this across everything you're not just doing one major spot and if anyone is going to show success in this is not just so so chis this is not just an awareness campaign this is the UN corn that has awareness and performance

capabilities allinone and that's how you do it in a sense in today's world to have it make sense and to have it be something that's goingon to work so if it doesn't work then I don't I get I don't know what we do anymore but they waited to do brand advertising until they were ready until their numbers were there remember we always talk about Lecky bucket they can hold this right if they bring players in if they if it works they are ready to do this kind of brand advertising and this awareness advertising and re-engage folks bring people in anyway that's my take so so you all you're your factoid everyone thinks map go is from their own country so what about the international aspect of this like you could take this budget and you could run a bunch of different creatives with more localized stars and more native languages doesn't this kind of break what you're talking about kind of international peel Monopoly go this feels very American Centric well so I like that idea a lot however remember like Chris Brad Jason Mamo like I don't know so much about Kiki's you know Global presence but the other two are W

practically Swedish at this point well yes of course and by the way like when I listened I didn't feel like they pushed him far enough on you know what will faral is all about anyway now so I think that you can have Global Superstars that can resonate globally I also think that the 2.0 of this is to do the same version with local talent that is much cheaper that that is much more specific and that's a great idea but I I think it can work at the highest level and by the way I think we've looked at the charts for this almost I think 75 77% of the revenue for Monopoly go is in the US so yes you can potentially grow Revenue in other countries but what they really do care about is who resonates in the US because this is a US TV campaign my eyes are now bleeding because I actually watch these spots last few minutes so you are not the target just like you told me I'm not the

target audience cmore clearly I am not the target I it was painful absolutely painful what what do you mean you guys aren't the target you're what plus High income High disal income no totally is not but you know the Super Bowl's coming so we'll see what they can do for that right they they will not do the scopy will not why not why not back Liam baby let's go you know like it's a [ __ ] flamethrower with the money we knew back at EA in God and when H do you I don't know if you remember and Zach Anderson so this amazing yeah oh like super smart guy he's not even in games anymore but we did this whole analysis on because I think EA had done some Super Bowl ads and at aome ads which are atah home ohh is like when you see a billboard on the highway that's what or on a building and so in the US at of home doesn't work other countries it works and then so we looked at the Super Bowl we looked at at a home and we

basically were like we lit money on fire and so that's why you have seen EA never ever ever do those things again now and and by the way that was in 20078 N I mean that was ages ago and it was great analysis even before all of the major like data sources that we have today so you're right I would never advertise on the Super Bowl and I would only do at a home in countries where that is successful like in Japan that actually does work really well well so anyway that's rent there I think the good news here is that we have a resource that can track daily revenue in the US and we can see how effective this particular promotion we'll have and as everyone's eyes bleed we'll see if the revenue increases or yes does not if the trend continues right we have to check in on it yeah we will check in yeah okay wish them the best I do wish them the best excited to see that let's see

embracer we we talked about do we want to do a little uh earnings season or do we want to do what else was in here I can save mine for next week I I wish Adam were here with him to talk about the town next week yeah that's what I yeah yeah that's what I'm saying I think it would be great oh yeah well still think we should there's been a lot of movement in battle passes I think we should talk about it like we never got to talk about the Apex Legends things I think fortnite crew is really interesting like there's a lot going on here that I think is worth like we do talk about games once in a while we talked a lot about games today product [ __ ] all right all right because there's a lot of good and that wraps well I'm actually not on the podcast next week because it's Thanksgiving and I have my other meeting that I have to do all right everyone thanks for listening and oh by the way please watch us on YouTube or if you're in the Spotify app you can actually see a video of this Phil loves to share his screen so check those out as well see you next week all right you did it you made it to

the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor fund slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fun.com slack and apply to join join the games industry's best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest sites from the deconstructor of fund content creators thanks for listening [Music]