TWIG #310 Can Royal Kingdom Reach the Peak? Who Wins the War of the You Giants?

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 310 where we go through all the game industry news so you don't have to happy American Thanksgiving to many of you who want to eat turkey and watch American football as is our crazy holiday tradition but here's what we got going on today uh Hasbro's next move they had they announced that they're spending a lot of money on gaming Royal Kingdom's big launch Laura digs into some of the the features versus where what we saw on soft launch and then Call of Duty it's the bigger biggest launch ever maybe depending on what numbers you look at so we're going to get into the numbers so hi everyone I'm Jen donaho strategic marketing consultant at Jaden Inferno and beta hat and today we have Eric Crest principal gossamer Consultant Group yo yo yo I'm wearing my new

PlayStation jacket that was provided to us by the great people at PlayStation so thank you very much I wore it to a reunion dinner last night because I was so proud of it and uh I love it and Jen has the same one yeah I too am rocking now my favorite it like literally my favorite swag of all time thank you to my good buddy kubak who hooked us up I mean like it like this is like it's OG GE it's like an I feel like I'm like you know who are the guys Run DMC I feel like I'm living my Run DMC Adidas jacket with PlayStation logo life right now all right powerful Playstation One swag that's true nice oh it's so good Mishka sorry in so so now we do a thing where we introduce ourselves go for it this is the most difficult part hey I am I guess the founder of deconstructor fund that's kind of lame do we have like funny

titles do am I the chief conflict Seeker is that the uh sure that sure whatever you want my friend okay it's your yeah all right all right I love it the king of the boondoggle right yeah just Le that that's actually I want to be king of the boondoggle that is what I am this episode thank you so much Chris thank you no problem and our fourth member I am Laura taranto senior director of product of bigf and I am wearing I don't have swag on but I have double sweatshirts because I'm in the great cold dark of Seattle face oh that's awful [ __ ] Seattle dude that place is so goddamn depressive why would you ever want to live in Seattle it is a little rough for the six months of summer we get or like maybe the five months of summer we get even then it's cloudy all right yeah Phil's taking a break this week and yeah so so Mishka I think I ref reference sauna and slush

like 10 times leading up so how did you actually do what deal how many deals did you do in a sauna please I'm not in the I'm not definitely in the deal making like slush is the most hardest event for me personally because it's an event that is very long it technically kind of lasts for the whole week people are here from Monday afternoon up till Friday evening some of them and it's at home turf so I'm not traveling to slush I don't get to sleep in a hotel room with a sauna like most of the people were posting where they relax and have this nice breakfast I come in late and I wake up early with my two daughters who um you know are pretty Rowdy in the morning so I don't get a lot of sleep and that's why it's such a rough rough setting for me but I would say slush delivered and Finland especially the weather was horrific people arrive in this chilly fall weather they would have their like a vest on like oh this is really nice and then we had the hail storm the next

day we got the blizzard on the day following the sea was so rough that this time around in the typical sauna event that we do people normally like swim in the sea they were guarding for people like do not go in the sea I know you feel after a couple of beers that you can do it you can swim in the ICC you will not go because this event will be canceled with five Americans drowning drunk in the in the Finish sea so they were like literally four people were Dr like guarding it in a blizzard because people were trying to do couple of insane people went in so they had to you know start guarding it overall this time around because I've you know naturally been to slush so many times since I lived here and continueed to live here I tried this sort of a quality over quantity approach so instead of like all these boond doggles though being a king of boond dles uh I tried to uh to spend more time with select people whether it's like a longer breakfast or longer dinner or doing these podcasts so when you do a podcast it's actually three hours we go for a lunch we discuss it or

we have a breakfast and we go to a studio so that was really nice it was like nice to connect and have that longer time and that also LED for us not having a mixer this time around so instead we had a supper club again like people sitting for three hours it's a smaller group we did that with abser it was packed it was fun it was great 30s something executive came in and just you know for a really long evening it was fun not a lot of time spent at these hotel lobby m marathons but just you know spending time with selected people and the number one question that I got in all the boond doggles was is Crest here like it was a half scared question like can they relax is he around oh come on like it's the most thing you're like hey hey how's it going is Chris here they wanted to hang out with me they're not afraid of me what are you talking about what are you talking about this is your core audience all the exacts all the CEOs all the all the

investors they were asking for Crush so now they get real talk they get real talk with I I I I've said this a million times I really want to do slush but that is the most inconvenient [ __ ] place in the planet besides like Australia to go see you know for like a few days like right in the middle of the holiday like oh my God what worst yeah it's impossible maybe when my kids are out of the house we could do it and the weather is awful too isn't it like yeah but that's kind of the point it's about the suffering right it's like really living hinki dud it's like you know you're in the heat you're in the cold it's misery but but that's life in helsink right yeah sell it the shittiest part is is like for you it's fun it's like oh my God how horrible is weather around here and then you leave I'm right you come back to California where it's like 75 degrees in sunny all year round it was like we literally had slush

yeah you know what slush is like what when snow melts and then it gets yeah no I understand that year round and and think about like you're going to like oh I'm going to meet this person and and she's waiting over there like you know a few blocks away and the and there sort of like a wet snow is going like vertical and you're like what the [ __ ] should I even be wearing in this we have these coats here that are like a winter coat but it's like plastered so it's waterproof you're like why would a winter coat be waterproof you haven't been to Finland oh man it's horrific all right you're really selling it your part of the world is misery it's misery it's misery let's [Music] chill 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 break house you got the Nama their back-end game server hero their game development framework Satori their liveop service and last but not least heroic Cloud to provide massive scalability

heroic Labs is a battle tested partner and their Tech enables you to be flexible creative and scal 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 okay I got a couple of shells so one shell that I've been forgetting it's an ad that we were supposed to run and it's kind of been somewhere lost in the bucket but heroic Labs so they launched sator 2.0 and it's a liveops product and we you know we talk about heroic labs in our ads but it's not just a backend platform they have all kinds of thing and this stor I've been doing a lot of research in live Ops and we'll be having some articles coming out but it has pretty much everything that you want from event captur to player segmentation to feature Flags to remote configuration to AB testing why I'm saying about this is they've been having Satori their live

op platform for a while and now they launched the 2.0 version with much improved ux I heard from from several clients were gaming included that they really like it so that's it I I did an ad read I promis that I will talk about their new live op product and it's really good now the the shill about deconstructor fund what we have here we we got a lot of content that came in last week we got John Wright the nicest guy in publishing doing a podcast with Cesar Deen Basi who is Tik tok's head of gaming in emia so we talked about Q5 and we talked about their live off product something that we've been uh discussing the podcast we had another quality person Ryan Davies their head of Performance Marketing he jumped on a podcast with Manish gajria who's a director of product from meta we talked about value optimization hybrid casual impact of AI all kinds of good stuff about marketing I don't know how I end up in these marketing podcast Jenna has been taking a break well you keep scheduling them in like European Time as but yes I I am sorry I've been I've been

a little busy this month but I did enjoy I think what I like that you've been doing and I've been trying to do this as well is not only have like the vendor or the supplier but also have a client who can kind of call BS or actually give the real talk right because you know for our audience it's like you don't want to just you know we don't want to just do vendor commercials but we want to bring people who actually use these services and and give us the real talk and so thanks for doing that the meta one was pretty good on that I can't ask these questions without these people so that's why I'm like I called them up who's ever in European I'm like John John I need you Tik Tok is coming on a podcast like I don't know what to ask kind I was kind of bummed to miss that one but but yeah I P you first I P Jen first and I'm like Jen it's fine to say no but we're having this and then same thing with meta like I need to have somebody who's a marketing expert to ask the questions and then also Phil had an excellent podcast with timy so they talked about Delta Force and teami studio is probably

10 Cent's best studio I would say so yeah they got the Age of Empires they got the Call of Duty mobile a bunch of other big heads so he had their GM talking about the upcoming Delta Force game and then on the blog side we had a telegram web 3 gaming piece so if you're interested in that then that's on the blog that's it where's my Delta Force invite I want to do the alpha for that what's happening yeah it so PC console or is it PC console next week first yeah so PC first and I know mobile got delayed to 25 I I think we covered this and it was like Delta Force is like on next week on the fourth and then Rivals is on the fifth and they did you know Delta Force did like a [ __ ] you to Marvel Rivals and said we're gonna it's like The Price is Right strategy but in Reverse like we're going to go a day before so it'll be really interesting next week to see what's going on so I need to shill one more thing so I just got the phone just before we start recording so we are doing a supper club

for PGC during PGC London that's in January I don't remember which state it was in January but we're thinking about I'm saying it now because we're thinking about doing it on Sunday as a Sunday roast because it starts on Monday so we would do it on Sunday so if you're coming a little bit earlier it would be at Soo house 40 people only a nice little Sunday roast let me know in DMS and and where like is that a good idea so it's not on the event day on Monday when you're having all those voon doggles and mixers it's the day before small crew good location good food Sunday roast that's it all right Chief boondoggle officer Mr M K all right who's doing the correction that's not a correction it's not a correction but I had a look so I know yall discussed Royal Kingdom a little bit again I don't want to classify it as a correction but I do want to dig into more details of the launch when we talk about games I'll go through it but again not not a correction just um an

expansion of what was talked about all right Phil who is not here has some corrections for what he said I love this that he like has his own Corrections so archero 2 is not Global he jumped the gun soft launch expanded to Taiwan and China what's SK South Korea yes when talking about the Ad Agency Bond merge Gardens not merge Mansion it's used to create strong wrong at LTV so there's merge Mansion Manor mansion and merge Gardens which features a mansion and creative what the [ __ ] new screaming dude app icon play I don't know what he means by that but you know all right we'll check into that and then on super viive in China nety holds the Chinese publishing rights and super viive is region blocked in China on the global version of the platform oh that's fascinating yeah what super

that's the theory craft is the X legal Legends team who went what was the other MOA there was the theory craft and then there was another one X rot oh that's Odyssey The Odyssey guys so they kind of shut that one down and they're working on their next so the other ex- Riot crew is believer who is still making whatever believer is making I don't know what that is I I don't know if they're making MOA I just thre it out there hopefully they are making a mooba don't know but I know that in looking at the steam charge superv and the anime hero shooter whose name I'm forgetting that starts with an S they're kind of like neck and neck on CCU so it's going to be interesting to see who's taking that on all right we're gonna move into my section the markets what's going on overall so in honor of our jackets I guess let's not [ __ ] on it too much but Sony reportedly is testing a new PlayStation handheld so from this Bloomberg article they revealed that

this handh handle will kind of be a little bit of a competitor to the switch maybe question mark it is still years away and the company may decide not to bring it to Market at all this is great reporting but you know the switch 2 is on the horizon so there there might be talks also about Microsoft launching its own handheld so I think what's old is new again and the idea of handhelds are coming back so Ethan's favorite Sony portal that launched late last year it still needs to connect to the internet to stream games so it's not the Rival the switch that I think anyone thought it would be you this actually got a little bit of press the idea of a Sony handheld and when I saw a bunch of people talking and meming everyone was like wow this is I mean Sony doing a handheld it's like they've never done that before we should probably call it the PSP what if we called it the Vita you know and so it kind of cracks me up that everyone that this is like some like Earth shattering announcement

it's like oh I hope they're going back in the vault and seeing why the PSP or the vaita or any of those other ones there's others too that didn't work I think we've been talking about this for years now that the handheld version is an obvious extension to the hardware opportunity for both Microsoft and Sony for that matter and Microsoft basically is is definitely building one for the next in two years or so and so Sony doing it the fundamental problem with this and every time I get talking about this stuff it's like I I hate to do the negative Nelly here but just to be a realist is that although I think it's going to be amazing device and I'm 100% supportive as I have been for building these type advices this is not an extension of the market this is just a tool to increase engagement in theory right so the more places you have to play the more your player base will play but the idea of actually what really needs to happen or I think is really important is to extend the market span the market I don't think this really necessarily does does that so I'm all

supportive of it I think it makes sense given how people consume content but the content really needs to change to expand the market in my opinion yeah Fair Point and then there's all these announcements the portal announced that it's doing you know like [ __ ] Cloud streaming or something like that you know does this one of the headlines was this do this eliminate the need for console no it does not just stop like that that we've been gone through this like a gillion times to stop okay please I'm begging you that is not an accurate depiction of the market my humble opinion no understood all right so let's talk a little Call of Duty so CR actually similar to this PlayStation story I've been seeing all kinds of blurbs and press around Call of Duty Black Ops 6 that it's the best ever and so I I even clicked into some of the announcements they put out like a a Twitter post and it was like we're the number one but all the number ones were weren't actually business number ones it was like thank

you number one total players number one hours play number one total matches and you know we're a business podcast and so um I know as a comps person and a and a PR and marketing person this is what you talk about when you can't talk about business stuff so I wanted to tee you up Chris because I think you you really want to dig in now that we have maybe a little bit more what's going on with Black Ops 6 the problem is that we'll never know right now because it's all buried in a bunch of muck around you know subscriptions and [ __ ] we don't know exactly what's really happening but to be clear we've been saying and I've been saying for the last two years is that this is the hero skew like Black Ops 6 is the biggest title in the Call of Duty franchise and it was always going to grow the franchise to in theory New Heights partly because it's across all platforms both current and prior gen and PC and now it's on subscriptions which

is opens it up to a whole bunch of freebies you know for people that are still subscribed so anyway this was always meant to be a huge skew and some of the comparisons that we're going to talk about are relative to the prior big skew which was Modern Warfare 2 but last year's title was a [ __ ] disaster just to be clear from a Call of Duty perspective it was a really really bad Call of Duty so it's a really really really easy cop with that being said Microsoft's commentary is all obviously very positive it is basically they're suggesting that you know day one players and the subscriptions to Game Pass were the highest ads on the subscriber base to date Etc well of course like no duh but the problem is they're not actually saying by how much right no and that the unit sales on PlayStation and steam were up 60% year onye which makes sense right because it's the much better title and you or no one's buying it on Xbox anymore and then cirana mat pisc know him why is that name so familiar yeah no

we know him he said in mid November the game six game pass release had unprecedent impact on player engagement so engagement is [ __ ] just like downloads right it's a completely [ __ ] metric okay just saying like I again I don't want to be negative Nelly here but when you say player engagement it always makes me a little throw up in my mouth a little bit right because yes it's important but it's not Revenue right okay because it's not free to play if it was a freeo playay game engagement would be even if it was a free to-play game that doesn't mean the revenue is up right well it depends on the type of game but there are many games where engagement in fact even literally correlated with Revenue however okay not this game but understood I I get your point so independently sir is basically saying they are saying engagement num Spike according to their analysis which is great in North that's I think they're all North America right correct us actually not even and last week he

basically said that there was a huge subscription spending boost according to their data a huge shift in share to full game sales to PlayStation which makes total sense and he claims it did not appear to result in a massive cannibalization in sales but I I just don't know if he can make that con kind of conclusion in my opinion but and I think the real important thing here is it did not provide a significant boost to Xbox series Hardware right which is okay moving on because I will cut back to that right I want to be clear again engagement does not equal revenue and it feels like this all feels very early and the fact that there no boost in Hardware is actually a really really bad thing right for the gaming Market as a whole just to be clear all right Europe commentary it was only a 12.4% rise in sales in Europe in October right which is bad right it launched in November last year yeah we should compet to like you were saying what was it versus not last year but the

year before right cuz last year was down so much yeah I wonder I mean I would imagine that that number is actually down versus the prior year but anyway I I haven't looked at it I I don't have the data if I had the data I could delve into a little bit more but he said that sales of Call of Duty were only 5% higher than last year's game which was terrible that's not good okay but and down 30% 28% versus Modern Warfare 2 which is really bad that's a really really bad performance on the unit basis for Modern Warfare that is cannibalization by definition right when the hero skew across all these platforms with this record levels of Engagement is down 28% in in the second biggest Market in the C in the world that's bad right and then PlayStation game was up 26% versus Modern Warfare 3 last year and only 2% higher than placed more Modern Warfare 2 so that's not good not as good as these announcements from

the company seem to suggest that's a actually really piss poor performance I actually can't even like figure this out the only thing that makes sense to me is that Microsoft is down so much because Microsoft is not doing [ __ ] in Europe right now that it's bringing down the overall performance of the game itself in Europe but it should still be up a lot more on Playstation in theory right so but what is clear is that Microsoft's LOF significant share of Call of Duty right both in Europe and North America for that matter without Hardware selling that's not good and it's not doing [ __ ] in Europe and it's definitely not selling well in North America so that's not good what this is intended to do is drive more adoption and interest in Xbox right that's the whole point of acquiring IP and franchises is to improve your performance and your market share that is not happening that is cannibalization right fundamentally right and so in some sense it's somewhat positive for Sony because it's a big game and Sony's doing reasonably well on

it although the European numbers are weak Microsoft I think is losing money right they are losing dollars share of the market by providing this on a subscription and uh not getting the Hardware bump because that Hardware bump if it were to happen would mean that they would have more engagement on the platform which would lead to further sales of other software right which is the whole [ __ ] point of having a big game like this is to drive people to your platform to buy [ __ ] okay so like this is what scares me about their whole strategy yeah and why their strategy makes no sense all right that's it so the Activision Blizzard acquisition which was basically like let's use content as a magnet to draw players into buying our Hardware to then subscribing to our service I mean that was their play right and then the other part of the play was thinking that players would be interested in engaging these IPS on any platform that's the Microsoft kind of like the Xbox Cloud promise so that's

their bet but I think to summarize it sounds like the numbers aren't showing that the you know the $69 billion do bet is likely not going to pay off it's funny I think back to you know Apple arcade and Netflix right and how much they're spending on the content with that same strategy of content is the magnet that brings people and keeps them on our platforms and you've said this a hundred times but it feels like players aren't as interested in in subscription services in this like HD world am I summarizing that correctly Mr C I mean 100% it's like a Rewards program that's what subscriptions really are that makes sense for this type of audience but this is not driving people to the platform right is the whole point if it was expanding the market Hardware should be through the [ __ ] moon right now agree that's what they wanted that's why they went with a 100 million subscription Target like two or three years ago right obviously they're at 30 or 35 maybe they get to 40 but they're like that's it they're stuck right

because there's no expansion of the market by having this type of content so they're really really in a tough spot I mean I think again this is we don't have access to all the data so I'm I'm sure people will push back with other data points but it's almost impossible to tease out because of the subs Stu but to be clear Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is a [ __ ] amazing game across all the different things that they're doing the zombie mode the single player the multiplayer p flawlessly executed very very little problems season one seems to be off with a strong start and anecdotally my brother who was a big hater at first is playing the game like a crack addict because he has no [ __ ] job so you know generally speaking this is an absolutely amazing release from Activision what what all I'm saying is it's not very I don't think it's going to be what Microsoft really wanted it to be yeah that's what I've been hearing as well is this version of the game is one of the best versions in a really long time they are really cleaning up the tech debt like I it seems like that that's the biggest b a big hurl for them

is that the technology was such a [ __ ] you know a cluster [ __ ] because of all these different teams and different games they now have completely Consolidated under one engine and one ecosystem it seems anyway when the next gen only version comes out which hopefully will be next year then probably clean it up even further oh interest is this Sledgehammer was this the sledgehammer one or which studio oh man I hate you put me on the spot here oh the Black Op that's the only Studio I've visited I forgot who's the premier one now it is Trey AR sorry is it yeah yeah what do you know only one you know no no makes sense all right sorry Mishka you had a question yeah I I had a question because you said like basically subscription gaming is not working as intended when is Wall Street going to realize this or have they already realized it well this was the wasn't it like weren't we all waiting for this the

Wall Street guys the smart guys know the subscription is not working because that was EA strategy that was like literally the only strategy that Andrew Wilson has had since he joined the [ __ ] company besides cutting costs and execution was subscription and it was a [ __ ] dumbass strategy right and so all they've done is maintain a subscription for people as like a frequent flyer program right for people that love Madden and love FIFA right and that's working for them but subscriptions are dumb right and everyone knows that at this point and they all kind of pull back from that idea of doing subscriptions except for Ubisoft well I think Ubisoft is even done that as well so I think Wall Street already knows that subscription is not working gaming but but they don't give a [ __ ] about Microsoft right because Microsoft's all on the AI thing they don't give a they don't I don't think investors really care about what's happening at this juncture for interacted or co-pilot right yeah I mean yeah they're chasing again chasing rainbows and unicorns of AI right right Which is far more

interesting yeah it's the new shiny object that's kind of distracting everyone from what's going on in gaming which they you know he probably very excited that it's a double-edged sword right one is every everyone's focused over here so you can kind of do your own thing but at some point they're going to realize oh boy when do we cut this and but having said that is that like they did the largest acquisition ever in Tech I think and so the scrutiny on making this thing successful is may be there to some degree it's just that really I don't think anybody on the investment side's really focused on this at all just don't lose money right and that's why they've kind of like started to shore up the cost centers and try to make it more profitable which is g to be very challenging interesting interesting all right you mentioned Ubisoft earlier Mishka I think you wanted to do a quick update on them there was a not even an update there was an interesting short article there was a report that ubis of Barcelona filed a lawsuit against return

to office mandate so this is not about office or return to work or returned from home or work from the Moon topic basically in short what happened is Ubisoft said hey guys we need you get back to work to the office at least three days a week and then they said it improves the creativity and betters communication and then the unions multiple said management has consistently failed to present any actual tangible benefits to back this measure and file the lawsuit and so what I find this interesting is this didn't happen in France we know in France this would be absolutely normal this would be Tuesday no no noed I know I know I have friends that live in in France and striking is like part of the culture yeah exactly it's a wrong lunch strike this is Barcelona which is essentially The Hub of European mobile game development at at least if not game development as a whole pretty

much all the companies are there and many are relocating or have already relocated and increasing their presence so my question more about this report was like do you believe that this could impact the appeal of Barcelona as a hub for companies if you know you can't even ask people to come to work like without offering a proof or is this just Ubisoft stuff are you trying to get me in trouble with all of Europe or something Mr Mishka is this like is this is this like a bit dude yes yes like you're [ __ ] you don't put a studio in [ __ ] France or Spain like why would you ever do that right 35 hour work weeks like hour mandatory lunch vacation like for a month out of the Year dude like no you [ __ ] there's like a gajillion places to put up a studio besides Barcelona and [ __ ] France dude why do you think in the [ __ ] show that they are it's because they're French right no one's working right so no yes go to Canada no I I would think that would be problematic if

somebody is suing and saying you can't ask people to show up in an office without proof of evidence that that sounds really difficult and you know I think the industry is like everyone's struggling with this return to work thing because even executives are of companies are moving away from the headquarters and then you know there are these Ghost Town Offices where people are like well why do I even live here anymore and I can just go be wherever so I don't know yeah I'm not going to do the rabbit hole of work from home thing but like yeah me neither there like a lot of mandatory bring come back to office you know with Amazon Apple Google like I don't know about Facebook yet but like it's starting to happen and what's really interesting is that EA is three days suggestion right this Tuesday Wednesday Thursday at this big huge campus in rward Shores and I'm like really like really like what the [ __ ] is happening right like is a creative industry it's like I really really am

blown away that that's happening at the corporate headquarters I hope for God's sake I hope that it's much better in Vancouver where they actually make games you know but it's almost criminal but I think to your point though it's like yeah a lot of these Executives have like living a lifestyle on in [ __ ] Hawaii or like you know in some like you know remote area of California where they don't have any people around like sitting on the be they don't have to they don't have to be around the poor so that's the uh that's the key exactly exactly the bougie [ __ ] the hardest thing I think is listen I I love working from home and get to hang out with my cats all day but what I worry about is the next Generation I I love my cats we hang and we no anyway so the next generation of game makers so my newest marketing associate Tyler is you know right out of college and he's craving you know being in an environment with other people and having what we all had growing up which is like the fun of

being around people how much you sponge and learn from people and the Young Folks are just struggling with that and how do we get that for them is I think the problem with all of the work from home stuff I missed the water cooler talk for sure exactly and then just connection well I didn't mean to to derail is to this work from home or remote or you know whatever conversation it was more like like I was just wondering I was reading this I'm like why would I open up a studio in a city where I could can get sued if I just say like if I suggest changes to the ways of working not like just changes like hey I think we should do this you're Su dude it's like what yeah no that's rough it's a big topic right now I mean Chris you mentioned Microsoft here is three days a week in office and I have a bunch of friends that I mean Seattle lots of people work at Amazon they're going back to 5 days a week in office starting January 1st it's like big Amazon's not [ __ ] around Amazon's not [ __ ] around dude those guys are be days a week soon so they're starting with five

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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 reachs [Music] performance all right next story human origin was a team founded by Casey Hudson yes Casey Hudson sorry I I lost his name he was an ex spare guy and they were creating some kind of like interactive character-driven story narrative a AAA game and they shut down recently because they couldn't find funding so it's a little bit sad I mean Casey was OG Mass Effect but they just couldn't find funding so it's like a really you again a tough environment and doing AAA outside of these big studios is is going to be continually harder and harder as funding kind of dries up so there another bad another story of that so all right interesting on the flip side azro has set aside about 100 $50 million to invest in games they're

looking up to new projects as they ramp up in this sector as we talked about in the podcast before they've moved from Toys to focusing on interactive for the last I don't know three or four years their CEO is the next gaming Guy what's his name Chris Cox's X gaming yeah oh he's a gaming guy supposedly they said that they the press release that they've invested over a billion dollars in games and they want aim to release one one to two games annually they said that they are developing a d and d game as well as a Wizards of the Coast game Commander format for magic of the Gathering which I don't really quite understand and that's on top of a gi. Joe action adventure game which no offense but gi. Joe is not the most contemporary license sorry guys but we'll see how that works Europe loves Europe loves GI Joe A Real American Hero no they hate it it's like America it's America [ __ ] yeah

type [ __ ] you know like Europeans [ __ ] hate that stuff just constant reminder of how much better the US is I have to say we don't hate it we just don't know about it like nobody actively really know no you hate the rah rah Americana [ __ ] right which I totally understand why I'm joking by the way about Europe sort of USA I am interested in talking about Hasbro and seeing what these games are like I mean I'm hear mixed things about the prospects here but anyway they do have lots of projects in development and they are trying to continue to expand with after the success of the laran game as well as obviously Monopoly go so anyway any any thoughts I have a couple thoughts I feel like part of this is influenced by them having Magic the Gathering as an IP and then see then seeing the Pokemon card game kind of take off I feel like that's totally influencing them and what I hope that they don't do is just copy the Pokemon card game that's what I hope they don't do we were trying I was

trying to figure out would that work and I just don't think it would work at all I we were as I talking with a friend of mine who actually plays more of these games than I do we were figuring out what type of audience what likes both of those IPS and we basically came down to Pokemon is all about the collection magic about the battling and the the card game that Pokemon came out with really leans hard on collection and the question was could magic recreate that to the same degree as Pokémon our our assessment was probably not they want the battles it's more hardcore in terms of like I looked at some of those cards they're intense they have like there's just so many rules and then he was trying to explain to me this concept of land and deck building for magic and it's just so much more complex which works for some audiences it'd be actually an interesting exercise of how you would simplify that to go more mass Market but the moral the story is it's not copying Pokemon 100% that was mine when I read the first thing that came to mind yeah the only push back I will give

you on that is that the Pokemon game itself is actually relatively complex I mean not as complex as yes that's Magic Gathering I think they've dumbed it down for the TCG is a if I'm not mistaken the rules that's correct for for Pokemon is it possible to do that with a core IP like magic I think you're right about that I think that would be tough should they do it they already have that replicates the core Magic the Gathering gameplay on PC and mobile right as far as I know I definitely have it on mobile so like maybe they could create some like casual version of collection and dumb it down to try to attract a broader audience I think there's far more potential upside no I don't want to say that I think it's something they should explore I think it'd be really hard to do and I think youd piss off the core magic fan base but it may be something to look at I don't know I stand behind

that what I was thinking about reading this is you know somebody says Hasbro I started thinking about Mattel so basically both are toy companies and I was looking at a little bit of their numbers and both are seeing declining sales as naturally kids in terms of not overall sales but the sales on toys as kids are spending more time on devices and buying roblocks and other type of nonsense the difference between Mattel and Hasbro in terms of market caps as one is Mattel is smaller it's about $6.2 billion it seems like their business has been more about licensing their IPs but they've you know leaned in gaming because that's where the kids are they created this joint venture called Mattel 163 it's a studio formed as a part of partnership between Mattel and ny's they brought in executive to drive their gaming business Mike dad who actually left this year earlier this year so something is changing perhaps in in Mattel that we

don't know about that's what usually changes in leadership means it's not good news when your ahead of publishing is left after a year and I'm friends with him and I'm just like you know that that's not on mic you know that's something that they they they clearly don't know what they're doing in the tell right if if he's only lasted a year yeah exactly so not not gonna go deeper into that I also have talked with Mike he's a great guy but the second part is Hasbro so Hasbro is 8.6 billion and of course they've been more successful in gaming they have naturally been really successful with their licensing business with scopi I mean scop has yatsi Wheel of Fortune Monopoly go but what I feel also what Hasbro has and Jen correct me if I'm wrong is a broader portfolio in terms of franchises that could work or IPS that could work with gaming anything from Magic the Gathering to Monopoly to Transformers dungeons into dragons to clo clo you do say clo clo we say clue but in Europe cluto is cluto clut it's the detective

game it's it's a per why is that not a hidden object game can you tell me why well it's it's like AIC game exactly it's a detective anyway so I don't know it seems like we don't know what's going to happen with Mattel Hasbro is clearly leaning and kind of like methodically investing more and more in games as they're reaping more and more rewards so seems like Mattel is is still figuring out but Jen what do you like what's your perception uh well well as you very well may know I worked at both Hasbro and Mattel so every single action figure brand that you can think of you know I made you know back in the day and then I made Hasbro games at EA for five years including the very first crossplatform game with Scrabble a lot of people don't realize that it wasn't all these other games but we made Scrabble cross platform you could play in Facebook on Android on iPhone and it was so kids and family gaming that's kind of my superpower so actually CIS I for this is for you I wanted to name drop because Mishka cannot get in a conversation with

us and not Nam drop I actually had a call with Yos vrin from Super Yos and super yeah yeah yeah and and Aldora and so first of all he's just incredibly lovely and a rock star and knows his [ __ ] and so he wrote a newsletter a couple weeks ago where he talked about Mattel and in talking to the CEO of Mattel yoast was like oh what's this toy etic like what do you keep saying that sounds like CEO [ __ ] and so I kind of like responded on the post I'm like actually this is a word that has been in toys for decades right this is like our way of saying you know hey how do you make an IP typically it's an entertainment IP whether it's a movie whether it's a game how do you make sure that that can translate to an IRL product that has a play pattern that makes sense for the Right audience and so so that's kind of what toy EIC means so let me just give you an example so

you know I made you may know that I made Star Wars toys for many many years so think about Luke Skywalker all of his outfits you have his blue lightsaber oh in movie three in Return of the Jedi now you have his green lightsaber now I have to buy both of them he's got aspirational Vehicles you've got the Speeder Bike you got the X-Wing he has a you know this garage full of these like really great things that you have to you know go and buy and then he's got a team of friends that are all like you got to collect them all you got to like do all that and by the way like this idea of having all of these great tools and accessories this is why Batman is like the best toy brand and is one of the best most aspirational IPS because every single you know age group loves all of his stuff for the past 85 years that that has been around so okay Jen why the [ __ ] does this all matter all right so let me kind of start to tie it back so the talk that I had with yo was about the interconnectedness of toys and gaming because of all these reasons and and Mishka you kind of touched on it so the idea that kids are getting younger and

they're moving to games quicker every single year so when I used to make toys I used to make toys for an 8 to 10 year old and then I did a toy project this summer actually I was working with Hasbro and you know now that core audience is like four to five oh wow and and many of those kids who used to play with action figures that now I mean how many of you out there and you you guys included like your kids are playing on Roblox at four and five years old like my I'm a step monster and my kids were playing Roblox step monster you like that one so like they've been playing Roblox and so they're starting to lose the ability to you know in a sense you know connect with like each other in real life connect with toys and so what's interesting is that toy companies like kind of own the brands and so what they're doing is they're saying okay I'm going to take these Brands I'm going to relaunch them in inside of like whether it be Roblox and we're going to do this

every five to eight years because now we have the idea of recreating these brands for a new audience because new kids cycle in like what other industry after you know three to five to eight years can you completely like just reimagine what you have and then every kid thinks that oh B blade would just relaunched for the third or four time that's for me or Nerf is for me even though like all of us play with those things you know as a kid so you know Phil always makes fun to me for saying that everyone thinks that Monopoly is from their country so every kid thinks that Nerf or Beyblade or turtles or WWE or Barbie or skibbidy toilet if I mean skibby toilet if you don't know what that is no maybe you should gole it but it is like the hottest new brand for Gen Alpha right now and this is going to be the next IP to come in and kind of own you know it was created as YouTube content and now it is going into Roblox it's going into

gaming it's going into toys and so now like gaming is actually the source of these things and so what's happening is you're creating these Brands and this Nostalgia and you're appealing to every single age audience member every single kid and what's happening is that these are becoming in a sense like dopamine Brands and so they've got these this great kind of emotional resonance with the audience so you've got incredible awareness Affinity Nostalgia the ability to have both a physical experience and a digital experience and every time I see that brand it brings me back to my childhood it makes me resonate with it because I you know I think you can't think of your most favorite experience of like a brand that you loved as a kid and not smile and so these brands are like a little bit like crack and so this is why Hasbro mat tell are investing in the evolution of these Brands not just from a physical place but into physical plus interactive

and so the problem is you know Crest to your you know always talking about the shitty trans media thing is that has real Mattel don't have and to our mic the lot comment they don't have the right creative people to bring the core fantasy of these in a sense toy brands to life in a way that fits the platform at hro a lot of like folks are being hired in to do this like Eugene Evans our good friend Barry dorf all these you know gaming folks are starting to go in and figure out okay how can we do that by the way Barry dorf is dead to me just saying dude he had a a lunch in [ __ ] Marin and he said that I couldn't come because I didn't live in Marin that I'm in San Francisco which is [ __ ] [ __ ] dude absolute [ __ ] Barry you're on my [ __ ] list this Christmas so don't expect any gifts anyway moving on sorry okay to wrap it up I think that

you've got these great brands that have this nostalgic factor that allows any age group you know the one of the reasons why we were so successful in the early days of the house business Eda is that parents are desperate to connect with their kids and many of these Brands the connect fours and monopolies the battleships the kutos allow a parent and a kid to actually engage in something in a digital space which kidss are native and for you to have those experiences together and so I think that the more that they can find the right creative people to kind of reimagine these Brands how gen Alpha and gen Z are are experiencing coming together and figuring it out in the right way to bring them to life is what they need and they need more people to do that I hate the word double click but what I was talking about before is that Hasbro is clearly Making Waves and moves into this interactive space this is the core strategy for their company and they put lots of people in place I can't say that

they're doing everything right by any stretch but they are doing some things right versus someone like Mattel which has some CEO that has no idea about video games or anything so like if you're getting a job in one of these companies like Hasbro is a far better opportunity than Mattel Mattel is way rooted in the old ways of like you know typical toy people that don't know anything about interactive at all so you know buyer beware right at least Hasbro like has a CEO who was actually a gaming person who worked at Wizards of the Coast I think he was at Microsoft for a while as well yeah the guy at Mattel doesn't know [ __ ] all about gaming right and so that just is just a shows their priorities or where their mindsets are and how much support you're ultimately going to get if you're ever to go there and honestly like Mattel doesn't have a lot of Ip really no they don't for game that was my point I was huge problem right they have a lot Hasbro's running out of Ip too right like what else do they have that really is marketable right well they have a lot of Ip it's

like how much of it can translate to if they want to go to freeto play or they want to games how much of it can translate to games shoot in ladders I mean what what else do they have left I mean they shoots in ladders let's be real Transformers is the worst [ __ ] license in [ __ ] video games right except for the collabs that they're doing so they have two different groups right one is he we're not talking about Barry on this podcast anymore I've given him too many compliments over the years to get [ __ ] slided okay fine uh the person who's doing the licensing that happens to have initials BD so you've got a team of people making original games and then you've got what that other guy is doing which is licensing the brands inside of collaborations inside of successful games so Transformers was in Brawl stars or one of the other supercell games it was in stumble guys you know so again to that Nostalgia there are ways to leverage the brands in really smart ways that show up inside of other games which I think is

the smartest part of the strategy because the other part is really risky which is taking a GI Joe or very Niche you know Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering and doubling down and doing what we do in gaming which is spend millions of dollars and millions of years making new IP that we don't know if that's going to work so at least they have a balanced strategy and I think what we saw with the success of Monopoly go which could be interesting is how do you take that play patter that they found and find another brand that might make sense and so Laura and I were actually talking about this and I was struggling and I'm like you remember the brand trouble which is the oh [ __ ] yeah oh you go around the pegs and then you you kind of Screw Your Neighbor right like you land on the other Peg and you kick them out and they have to go back to the home base and I was like well that brand has the core fantasy and the core feeling of I need to get to the end first and I'm going to [ __ ] over my neighbor and in order to get there that has a similar feeling that Monopoly go

has like the core fantasy of Monopoly go is I want to be rich and I want to bankrupt all of you other [ __ ] and take all your money and that's why that game is successful because the mechanics allow you to live that and so maybe there's like if they think about it in this way there might be ways that they could take and extend these Brands into unexpected ways because the reason why you want to do that is whenever anyone sees that Monopoly Act they're like oh I remember I kind of understand what I'm going to get from that experience let me go play it oh it's different than I thought but it's still kind of unique and different and modern that's the magic that they have to go and figure out call me Barry because I will help you anyway all right that's my Hasbro rant what else we got well let's talk about quickly about an acquisition in Turkey so Chris you should be talking about this you're the Venture partner at Laton Venture so you should be all about turkey so so there's an exit in Turkey

Pakistan based mobile game developer game district has acquired a majority stake and turkey based mobile developer glean games as a part of agreement the CEO of gleam games will assume the role of game District Chief strategy officer so I'm just bringing this up because I actually met the CEO of game District such a nice guy and I had no idea how booming the Pakistan's like game development scen is game District bootstrapped I think they have like 15 Studios 500 people and and he told me that hexor the game that I've been playing like a crack addict for almost a year is made in Pakistan and the fact that they're acquiring a turkey studio is interesting they're you know they're moving in so something to follow maybe we'll do an event in lore I don't know who's going to come but I'm gonna go so I don't know these guys king of boond doggles there you go king of Bo always lore I'm coming and then final one app charge so these are friends of the podcast they raised 26 million to help gaming apps cut out Apple and Google from virtual Goods Revenue app charar sees itself as kind of a Shopify for

gaming a platform for Publishers build their own sites for selling gaming currencies and other virtual Goods directly to Consumers so web shops of course want to take out one thing notable investor supercell has invested in app charge so um wonder if they will be using their web shop Solutions going in the future but yeah the CEO is Maris asson never seen somebody being so cool and friendly at the same time you'll meet him at our various events he's a he's a cool dude oh nice all right so we had the Call of Duty big launch and we also had Royal Kingdom launch so just a little bit breakdown this game has been in soft launch for almost 20 months the first version came out I know it's long this is what you do today this is old scho no no no no you launch you launch after a month of soft launch that's what we do who does that I haven't seen that in a long time well actually anyone who's

listening weigh in give me the games that have launched within one month I would love to see that Squad Busters they had a longer soft launch than one month kidding it was kind of a month yeah kind of a month technically the soft launch was a month but they did do close betas anyway oh yeah so when this game first came out it was May 2023 what I want to like what people to understand is there's three phases of this game there's the phase that came out in May and then they made changes they made quite a bit of changes then they made changes in July and now we have the version that came out in uh this month in November and what I was trying to do is figure out what was their play what was the product Market fit they were going for if you play the games they seem really similar but if you start to dig in I actually think this was kind of what homescapes and gardenscapes did in terms of going for slightly different audiences I know they still have both of Austin but they they

do capture different audience types that's what I think the play was for dream here so version one of the game I think very much focused on can we do this make it feel PVP can we add more mid corish puzzle players can we bring them in and convince them they like you know match three games I feel like they started to figure that out and then as they iterated on the game the the biggest changes I would say between version one and version three the attack levels as we know moved from what was like pseudo PVP to new villain character and okay this was a huge content treadmill Edition those levels started as every 10 they're now every five and for anyone who's worked on a match 3 game you know the levels like I'd love to think they could all be AI made a lot of them are not good levels are usually design like what you have a designer making one they go through multiple iterations with a design team they're playing the levels they're trying to figure out is this fun does un like kind of the movement of the board does the unlocking of the obstacles ises reaching the goal does that make sense these

levels if you take an attack level not only do you have that thought of how are you setting up the actual level board but then you have the whole bit on top which is which kind of monsters or villains are you fighting above and all of them that they're introducing have basically different types of traits they are require a lot more effort to make they've basically taken on a heavier content treadmill and then added it more frequently in the game and then I'd say the other big thing they changed is they did a lot of work behind the scenes around the progression and economy they simplified it the first version definitely you had like kind of what you see in a midcore game all these things like this this resource this resource this res they definitely scaled that back to make it simpler and then the you had win streak wi streak is how well you can complete a level or how if you spend to basically win the level on the first try you win the level on the first try you get rewards it used to be tied to progression they took that out so now it's less skill which I think is good it makes the general balancing much easier

to do it does have it so that certain hardcore players of Match 3 love the skill aspect they want to show that they're Masters they want to win every level and and be and feel like they're good at it so that's definitely a shift so I everything I've looked at and I go into a little bit more detail on this in um Neil in Neil Long's blog because he he talked about the launch is that I feel like they lean super hard into we need something that feels midcore light and then I felt like they had to reain it back and they realiz maybe you know what actually we're capturing this audience without needing all of this kind of the things that would NE maybe push away a more of a casual player so I feel like they they got what they wanted they if they launched that means hey they got it to appeal level where it's now bringing more players in great without having to appeal what I would call a little bit more male Centric which is what I sort of was referring to as the midcore light I'm excited for it I've played I finally unlocked ice World it took me a week of

grinding to get through a 100 Levels totally drained my coins I would say this game is 1.5 to two times more difficult than Royal match hands down interesting is this is definitely a more difficult game well this is the thing about puzzle games it can be a good thing I there's different ways to monetize right so for if you're going to make that more difficult you're naturally going to scale your audience down a little bit not everyone's going to want to play these really hard levels but the players that do stick around and play I think they're trying to do slightly smaller audience bring in different types of players and players that'll spend more so I think they're going to go for higher Spenders even if the overall Dow is going to be a little bit smaller are you ready for the most difficult thing yes maybe predict whether this game will make a billion dollars like you're clearly super excited about this is this it is this because like this is the second game like imagine dream has only la laed one game and with their first game just became the number one puzzle game and

this is only their second game is this for all the marbles like does this make the company worth 10 billions or are they going to be in the single billions digit like where are we because this is a brand extension so the way I would look at this is looking at us arpd just for Royal match it's just under $3 that's insane that's great what's their other one Royal match Royal so sorry Royal match is just under $33 in the US for arow right now Royal Kingdom is about 30 cents but it's still early it's still early so do I think it's going to be a billion dollar game probably I don't know how long it's going to take them but do I think it's going to be bigger than in terms of Lifetime Revenue Royal match probably not is this Pet Rescue Saga to their Candy Crush or is this the Candy Crush Soda Saga like this is I think this is Soda Saga yeah okay this is Soda Saga this is not ped rescue yeah yeah no offense Kim nordstom you may also remember that I'm

at the endgame on Royal match I'm a whale in that game I'm it's embarrassing I'm on level you know 9,81 so when you when you get to the end and you're waiting on levels I throw you into like champions league and so then I do basically another 500 levels over the course of the couple weeks because Champions League yeah I just yeah I knock it out you just love the puzzle it's my dopa hit like it is a way for me to take a break from work and I love that game and so obviously so I've been playing Royal Kingdom for a few days now I'm only at like level 60 I haven't seen the difficulty yet Laura because they are slowly unveiling things to me and it feels like a incredibly dumb down version of a puzzle RPG I could see where I didn't play it in soft lunch but I saw a lot a lot of your videos and I and you could see that they were trying to go puzzle RPG and they they ripped all out and basically it's the same game honestly it feels like a knockoff to me

the the way it looks the way it plays feels like a knockoff and you know everything else like the rapper and they actually put like CG story in the first three battles they put in like the CG trailer which I was like oh my God this is going to be expensive if they do this every time but they only do it the first like three battle levels and I like oh that's cool you know you could skip it if you want but it tells the story of like the Dark Knight is attacking the king's brother whatever you know whatever that is so for me it definitely feels like a soda or a lesser brand extension I would be worried a little bit about cannibalization because they ripped so much of what makes it differentiated out it's kind of like the same game that happens to have a unique level every five levels but it feels less than I don't know that's kind of my early feeling and again I'm only 60 levels is and play used to have they they tested for a long time with a

puzzle RPG it was like a supercell looking puzzle RPG I forgot what what the name is and apparently the rule is you never go full puzzle RPG it's a category that is it's really competitive and really tight and what people don't realize is it's a completely different audience like puzzle RPG is I want to play an RPG that happens to have this mechanic that is puzzle m and then puzzle players just their motivation for playing the game is completely different and the something in the middle like there there is the VIN diagram of those two things I don't know if it exists like I'm just not seeing it if Royal Kingdom couldn't find it with the best puzzle people in the world I'm not sure it's there I'm not sure there's something in the middle I think you have to go to one extreme or the you got to be a puzzle RPG and dig into that and have Game of Thrones which is what Zenga did or you got to have that hardcore license and appeal or you just you got to be kind of like puzzle maybe with

some story and different things but yeah cgis by the way are phenomenal yeah it's super sell quality they did a really nice job when you get to level 500 Jen you'll see another one they do explain why you're traveling Between Worlds but the only thing I will say yes the levels are similar but if you look at a puzzle session like you're playing I would say anywhere between like 35 to it could be 50 depending on what stage in kind of the level segment you are a session so well it may not seem like five every five levels is a lot it actually is because it's it ends up being a large percentage or enough of a percentage of your session that the that your differentiation that you're feeling between levels is not small so I enjoy those levels but I don't know how an average puzzle player feels because basically the board inverts and so when you're play Gravity changes the gravity changes right and so I was like well for me I get it I play enough puzzle CU I'm really deep into this but if you're more

casual do you like that I enjoyed it I thought that the way that you battle was really interesting and how you can send your specials up to attack the Bas I'm like oh this is fun but I don't know how an average puzzle player like I don't know how Their audience feels but you know obviously that would be I'm giving you a little bit more of my player perception than my and my marketer perception would be I hope they segmented I hope they really look to understand like what are the core motivations and what are people enjoying about the experiences because I don't know one other sorry one other point with with those battle levels the kingdom levels do you remember like uh when we did white out survival and we're they were looking for one of the thesises was the onboarding so great we're bringing you in you're going to play this forx game and you're going to love it even though you're not you don't know you're a Forex fan yet I like there's a little bit of that here in terms of this is definitely onboarding you to a more difficult game so for those battle levels when you have a puzzle game the board Size Matters

depends that it's how many pieces are spawning it's the likelihood of getting Cascades all of that matters those battle levels reduce the board size that makes it significantly more difficult so I think the regular size is 9 by 11 the kingdom battle size is 9 by seven yeah those levels get progressively tough there a couple that aren't so bad but those levels get progressively tougher over time oh interesting I don't know if they want the average puzzle player I think they're looking for a slightly different more male Centric without throwing you know putting in like you know the Grand Theft Auto IP but anyway say like a a bro I I was just like I you talk about white out survival I just remembered a friend of mine just uh opened up that he spent a sports cars worth of money on on that game wow no it happens and a crust type of a sports car no he's fine don't worry about it he's a a Porsche he's a he's yeah g three I would assume like that that t my money that kind of money are you kidding me

yeah yes Jesus Christ crap he's he's he's fine he's on a different level but I was like excuse me that sounded so insane anyways but we talked about the idea that you know like this is how you have to do it in gaming you got to on board somebody into something that is casual and easy to play and kind of hooks you in and slowly unveils this more complicated more intense deeper more competitive more competitive exactly so this game is not competitive that's what I mean I'm not going to get to level 500 so thank you so much for explaining what happens there I play this I played this enough already all we know is that dream folks work insanely hard yeah everything I've heard is like these guys and Y work incredibly hard it'll be interesting to see how how this game takes off because it's launched for Q five so they're going to start scaling probably right after the Christmas break

no no I during the Christmas break yeah between Christmas and yeah I think like in the next week or two I want to go through like the mobile release Cadence because we had absolutely no releases this year that were solid right that were good this is probably the first big game and that it'll scale through the end of December but like last year was a banner year for big games yeah Pokemon's the only reasonably big game but that doesn't even well there was uh zenis we'll look back on no those yeah those are disasters AFK Arena all these games were not good like they did not perform well but anyway I want to go through the actual numbers now that yeah and and walk through it because it could mean a tougher year for next year let's cover this one last game that is launching next year with the FIFA license so press release so FIFA I think this was more fifal Leed um so so mythical games who did NFL Rivals which is a mobile free-to-play game that has blockchain

components so FIFA is going to work with them to do FIFA Rivals so it's going to include free-to-play web Marketplace that utilizes the the Mythos blockchain to allow players to own buy and trade so what cracks me up is that the press release keeps saying Esports and I'm like oh my God FIFA doesn't know what they're talking about they don't realize Esports Esports is a different thing than taking a sports game for mobile like I'm like you're using the terms incorrectly obviously they didn't consult mythical team solo mid is not going to be on this yeah I I I I'm like especially because what they say is that they they purposely said out of respect or out of differentiation we are not going head-to-head with FC which is EA's Now new you know they probably side out of relief they're like oh thank God mythical is not coming after us well and they shouldn't on especially on mobile and so here's what they said is we're

going to focus on Arcade gameplay rather than the simulation style scene in fc25 because it would be absolutely stupid to try to go up against them in what they own and I think they said it's coming summer of 25 they are going to have some of the licenses but yeah Crush please go mythical are they out of their minds like are is this is that'll be a joke like this is this guy who took over said he's going to compete against EA in simulation soccer they're coming out with an arcade game with mythical I mean mythical is not a game developer right I mean they're like a blockchain company you know again I think wos mathas or Matas whatever the his name is is way out of his league so to speak they should have never poked the bear at EA FIFA is really no longer relevant as an IP or a brand for gamers probably based because of his handling of the license and of course he's a swed right

I mean that makes all the sense in the world right I should have known that he's a swed no wonder he doesn't know what the he's talking about and so anyway well well but what's his name's not here so I can make fun of the swedes right Phil Phil Phil you know him Phil's American but that's okay no he a I know he has a Swedish passport he's been accepted he's honorary right he's got to accept the good and the bad about being a Swede and this Matias guy or whatever is definitely one of the bad um so Kim those guys foring up that license and we'll see what we'll see what happens with this game but it is not going to compete against EA's game at all so good for EA yeah agree the mobile soccer or mobile football sorry let me speak European the mobile football landscape there's a lot going on in the landscape and where I was trying to segue this in was do you and could you have this kind of interesting arcade experience that

brings people into you know mobile football and then graduates them into a more High highly monetizing more complicated experience offering something different I think that is what we're seeing be successful in mobile games in general and what we could see successful a little bit more in Royal match if that unveils and maybe they do introduce PVP later on or something like that because what was it match Masters had success with that which was like yeah candy yeah synchronous PVP yeah everybody was trying to do one at one point but again like it seems like like puzzle RPG it's like a one game genre with puzzle RPG we had uh empir and puzzles Empires and puzzles with that one it's like match Masters nobody else and everybody's trying to do the same one like I've heard the pitches for uh PVP puzzle game so many times so many times yeah no it's a candore yeah I mean they're they're I haven't checked in on them lately but I know that they were doing good with it and

they were pretty decent actually soda did a PVP live op feature that was true PVP so that I know King has dabbled in it for sure and jelly kind of has that AI battle Queen Bot thing we didn't talk about didn't King remove two games from soft launch the Laur I think Laura I didn't know I didn't cover it I just posted it in our little group oh down was the 3D Match Game yep and the it was the blast one but their solitire one is still alive oh okay uh for now because we all need more Solitaire apparently we do all right I guess maybe you can innovate on top of that but well if they're out of ideas I think we're out of ideas too I think we should wrap up yes yes I know we went we went super late uh we will see you next week everyone apologies everybody for the long episode and see you next week you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would

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