TWIG #311 Musk Enters the Game, Archero 2 Aims for the Bullseye, PlayStation Goes Portable

[Applause] Hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 311 where we give you our insider takes on the top game industry news stories each and every week. Here's what we're covering today. Gamers are watching games more than actually playing them. So, there's some new research and some very big games that have come out the last couple of weeks. League of Legends being one of them. Worlds, great numbers on Worlds. So, we also have the product guy here. Adam is here. And so, we're going to check in on some of the most recent launches with Pokemon, Capibara, Archer 2, and Crest's new favorite moa, Supervive. So, lots to get into on how those games are doing. So, hi everyone. Everyone, I'm Jen Dano and on the squad RPG that we call this week in games, I fill in on the marketing and publishing role. Chris, oh me, it's my turn. Early

morning. So, I am the corporate strategy slashtrashtalker. That's my role in life right now. So, there we go. Oh, hello. Look, we literally came up with these new titles. So, this is Rusty. I'm a ex product guy turned I would say I'm a founder support guy. That's what I do almost every day. I'm a founder support hotline. Founder supportal emotional support animal. There we go. Perfect. Less emotional. I like to support more tangible but emotional if they need to have some some emotional support. Yes. But don't call them. If they need a hug, Mishka will be there. Yeah, exactly. In my comfy little lemon shirt, I'll give them a bear hug. And I'm Adam Telver. I am a product person, product guy. Let's go with that. And Phil is also off this week. Who would be our economy monetization guru and bean counter,

right? I guess would be what Phil is. Let's go with that. Yeah. And Laura, who's the puzzle queen. Uh yeah, she she is product puzzle queen for sure. Absolutely. Regarding Phil, he was in Finland and I knew about this cuz he sent me a Slack message. Like he's in he was working with a client, but still like I'm going to Stockholm in February. I might send him also a Slack message and not meet him. No, I wouldn't do that. I will meet him. But like you can't be that busy. Phil, you should have said hi. I was just in LA and I saw Jen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was awesome. We hung out, handed him a jacket, had dinner. Yep. With a friend talked a little shop. It was great. Oh yeah. Phil's such a cat person. So So the Game Awards are happening next week on December 12th. If you're in LA, come and join me at a watch party cuz I don't want to sit in a seat for 4 hours at the actual theater. So there's a

watch party at the Hundred Thieves headquarters in Culver City presented by Planet Play. So sign up. There's a link in the Slack channel. We'll also put it in the show notes to show up. So, you know, coming to the Hundred Thieves headquarters is a watch party in itself. Crest came to the last happy hour that we did there and uh it's pretty cool. So, come on by next week. Such an awesome name for a company, by the way. 100 Thieves. I know. Shout out to that. That's a creative name. Yeah. You've heard of Heroic Labs by now and we keep talking about them because you need every edge to be successful in today's market. Heroic Labs gamestack is built like a brick house. You got the Nakama, their backend game server, Hero, their game development framework, Sattorii, 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 live ops, and save a big chunk of cheese, all with heroic labs. I got a lot of shells. So, number one, uh this is the big one. So, we did a hybrid casual playbook uh with Meta and it's out. to deconstructor fun and meta worked on a hybrid casual playbook. There's a link in description below. We'll be doing a lot of episodes with hybrid casual publishers, say games, role, crazy labs, you name it. So that will be coming in on the podcast in the future month, but the playbook is out link in the description. And then talking about the reports, our friends at Appsfly have released their state of the app monetization 2024 report. So for the first time, why this report is interesting is they have released content around monetization models. So you will see rorowass and arpoo benchmarks for inapp ad games for inapp purchases for hybrid for subscription models if you're an app person. There's

paid and organic revenue shares for several different models. There's daily active users and paying user trends etc etc. So really good report. I suggest you check it out. It's the state of app monetization by appsire 2024. And then on a podcast side we've been popping. So applovin was on the podcast for the first time. We were on the the blacklist for a while after, you know, one of our co-host of of the past was making critical remarks and he did not like it. We make critical remarks of people sometimes happens, but we're friends again. So Daniel Chanahovski, he's been in Applover in I think 9 years. So really OG. He joined and kind of discussed the seven different trends that define 2024. And it's interesting because he brought some of the things that they see in their data which is different that other data providers see and they do have a lot of data. And then uh released a podcast today with Serge Vasuk. He's a live ops director, product guy if you will at war gaming, also OG

at Wargaming. And he sent me this book calling running successful live services game few months ago. We recorded the podcast. I skimmed through it, read some portions, used AI. I'm not going to lie, I used AI, but I have the ability to actually invite him on a podcast and we had a lot of discussion about pieces he had. So, check that one out. I know people are enjoying it. And then, thank you for all the feedback regarding the Sunday roast idea. So, I got several messages of executives saying like, "Yeah, let's do it on Sunday. We'll come in before PGC." So, PGC's on Monday. That will come Sunday before. We got the Soho House and it will be a small gathering about 40 good conversationalists, founders, execs, etc. We'll gather for a supper club and we'll do also a bigger event, a mixer at the Soho House in Shortitch later that week. So that's all my shills. A lot of stuff coming in. Yeah, I will give one more shill. I was at the party for Sensor Tower Adjust last night, the Jingle Jam Holiday Party. can't say that

I really uh support the name, but nonetheless, it was good to see people back in Joseph Kim was there, some other friends of the podcast, but it was a cool event. Sensor Tower is working overtime to uh get these things going. So, stay tuned for new more stuff. Yeah. Invite us to stuff we show up. All right. Any corrections? I got a little bit of hate from Mr. Barry Dorf. I love you, Barry. Don't worry about it. I was joking. It's a joke. You're still my boy. We've known each other since 98. So, I'm not giving because I got completely destroyed by not being invited to your uh lunch. I'm still your buddy later. Speaking a little bit of Barry Dorf, you know, I I let him know that we may have been discussing him on the podcast. He's so lovely. But did you guys watch the Madden documentary on Amazon Prime? No, I I actually been meaning to watch it. a lot of OG folks

from EA over there on it, right? So, it was my Thanksgiving Day binge. There's four episodes. I'm going to warn you, it's a little bit infomerally. And so, the history is amazing. And then what they're doing today was like an infomercial for Madden. I was a little annoyed at the tone shift that they kept having, but fascinating. like highly recommend it if you even if you're not into like Madden and American football. Just the history of like how they came up with, you know, the brand and how they thought about, you know, the game and now we have to the battle with 2K. Just really cool like history. So, highly recommend it. I've never played Madden in my life. I I have to say like the thing is I watch all the Netflix, you know, like documentaries like the hard knocks is another one and like all these documentaries that came in the quarterback and the wide receiver like all that stuff is great but for some reason I don't know how to play Madden. I've tried like I I mean like I played it once and I was like I don't even know

how to play American football but I enjoy the drama of American football but I just can't play it. I have no idea of the rules. It it it's complicated. Yes. And and by the way, Hard Knocks is on HBO and which is which is actually really a a great series, you know, fantastic. May I point out the American football Dallas Cowboys helmet signed by EMTT Smith behind me? So, as as a football fan and a soccer fan, I actually just saw that the first time. Yeah, that's impressive. That's very impressive. Is Cowboys like the most hated franchise? Is it like the Maple Leafs of That's That's the Patriots. Yeah, the Patriots. Oh, Patriots is now Chiefs, but before I don't speak my language. Is Dallas like like Maple Leafs? Dallas like Maple Leafs? I don't know. Yeah, like like Toronto Maple Leafs, you know, like how their position. No, but like the Maple Leafs are like the joke of the NHL in terms of the team that spends so much money that's in a very city that can never win versus Dallas at least holds on to this dynasty that they had in the '90s. Got

it. Right. like they were the dynasty of the '9s versus the Patriots and you know the the 2010s and now the Chiefs are the dynasty of the day that everybody hates. So Adam interpreted this to Finnish which is talking about referring to hockey. Now everybody knows what this means. Now people understand. Yeah. Like Toronto like when was the last time I had a dynasty like like the late60s. So let's move the [ __ ] on. Okay. What the [ __ ] is happening? Oh god. Let's talk Fortnite. All right, so Fortnite just wrapped its latest season and they saw a new record with 14.3 million players, marking an all-time peak. 3 million people streamed the concert concurrently, which sets another all-time record for Fortnite concert. So, it was Snoop Dogg debuting his new single. Eminem was there and then Ice Spice and then Juiceworld, who is a rap star who has passed away. And so they

postumously released a new release from him. He has a new album out. I don't know how you do this when you're sorry. I'm like not, you know, like if it's, you know, '9s alternative and Metallica that I'm in. So anything in the rap world or any music of today, I'm completely like out of it. But what was cool is that they did another music video with this rap star who has passed away. And it was really it was actually really beautifully done. And so clearly this formula of using concerts and music artists to get players involved to create these moments. They had a Snoop Dogg perform live at the beginning of the season and so at the end of the season it was more of the traditional, you know, you go in and you play in the in-game world. So huge numbers for them. Seven years and going, Fortnite still kicking. So it seems that there's this trend of gamers actually spending more time watching videos about gaming on YouTube and Twitch than playing them themselves. So that's according to a new report from media research who says that gamers spend 7.4 hours a week gaming and

8.5 hours a week watching gamer related videos. So that that's just kind of interesting in general and it kind of begs the question like hey can you actually monetize some of your gaming content on your YouTube channels? Maybe. But the other thing that was really interesting is League of Legends Worlds happens. So, if you don't know, every year the World Championships happen. It moves around the world. There were 50 million peak viewers globally. Now, let's just say that 43 million of those were in China, but but 6.7 million viewers were outside of China. And this was the highest total viewership since 2021. And the all-time high record for viewership outside of China. So that 6.7 million was the highest it's ever been. Now remember I just said for Fortnite it was 3 million. So again, you know, just just to keep that. So Chris, I just wanted to check in. This is all because of Arcane,

right? Of course it was. Of course. But did you know that the second season of Arcane has been censored in China because of LGBTQIA+ something content? Did you know that? I I did know that and I wasn't actually going to bring it up, but since you did, as a member of that community, it is obviously it's kind of sad. It happens all the time though with that kind of content. So, they took out any of the Caitlyn VI relationship stuff. Completely censored out former Where was this event, the the World Championship? I don't remember where it was this year. Why is it not in China? 86% of your audience is on it. It will be next year, but it rotates around China. But you know what's crazy about this stat is this like actually almost perfectly with the 3 to 5% monetization thing in the US, right? Because if only

13% of the audience is outside of China watching this thing, if you like a 60/40 split, which is I think is a lot, 40% for the US, rest of world is the rest. That's like 5% of the overall viewership is in the US, right? Like funny how that kind of that no those numbers work. But yeah, interesting. Interesting. Okay, Mr. Riot, let's come back at me. Uh, let's move forward. Yeah, PlayStation Portable. So Bloomberg was reporting that Sony is in the early stages of developing a portable console that would play PlayStation 5 games on the move, but it's likely years away from launch and the company could still decide against bringing it to market. Uh this is paired against recent reports that Microsoft is mulling over a handheld device as well, but I think you should start to channel your inner crest here. Temper your expectations. And also kudos to Brett Hoffman who did call out a bunch of these numbers. The handheld

market. Steam Deck is a beloved console. I use it all the time. But estimates it at about 3 million units sold life to date so far. So far, last I've checked with any of the sort of indie streams that talk about percentage of engagement. We're talking about low single digits of engagement on the Steam Deck. PlayStation Portal 500K units beating expectations but 500k units. Nintendo Switch is at about 150 million units right now projected to about 160. So even accounting for just trajectory these are totally different markets. Sony and Microsoft can totally go after current gen content device late in the life cycle, get some additional revenue and leverage their existing content, which is better than what they did with PSP and VAT. So, could make sense, but let's not pretend this is like a massive new market and a massive opportunity. Eric, you're you're leaning in. What are you saying? Did I channel my crest here?

This is that a good crest? H, that's pretty good. You need a you need a little bit more emphasis in your voice, dude. Um, but yeah, I want to be clear like I've actually talked to Sony and Microsoft about this specific issue and this is more of despite what they say in marketing, this is a device to improve engagement for existing audiences. This not a device to go after Nintendo or to expand the audience beyond where they're at right now. This is like it's just basically a device to support the existing user base. And I think it's a good idea. I said this many times. So, I think it's a great idea. I think it'll be an interesting piece of kit. It's cherry on top. That's it. Incremental. Maybe it helps with some monetization. Yeah. Increases accessibility to the device. That's pretty much it. All right. Last one in the headlines. This is something that I saw on LinkedIn a ton cuz everybody was weighing in. And this is Elon Musk's tweet. So, uh, too many game studios that are owned by massive corporations. X AI is going to

start an AI game studio to make games great again. So um yeah, as I said, everybody weighed in and we haven't. So I brought this here. You know, journalists weigh it in, but they were really hateful. Like I read PC Gamer was like such a hateful way of describing like Musk. So anyways, the facts about Musk is that he clearly loves games. I think it was like Diablo for top one player at some point. I don't know how he finds the time. He has all the resources, infinite money almost. He can clearly run several businesses at the same time even though they're very different from each other and he has a massive following. So you guys think that X AI games will be a thing or is this just Musk trolling again? I don't particularly care to be honest. Like like you have to weigh in. This this was the thing the whole god Musk is here. But at the same time I'm like look I think an AI focused game startup is a good idea. If he can

pull together really strong talent that can operate on their own, then absolutely an AI startup right now could make sense. But I don't think he's like I don't think he has enough time to do this, right? Like it it would have to be a web 3 game too. Yeah, I don't think he's going to do that. But like like an AI game startup absolutely makes sense right now. I don't think he has time to actually manage this. So it's more about can he recruit the right talent to build the startup. That's it. We saw what happened with Netflix, right? Like this isn't Netflix. This is just like, is this startup going to work? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's talk about investments. Investments, divestments, and M&A. I have one piece. So, the invest.com. So, these guys released another report and it was about European consolidators. So, it looked at Embracer Group. Shout out to Embracer Group. keyword studio still front team 17 MTG pull up or something apparently this is

like a French public company a publisher and EG7 so basically it's a slide deck for finance nerds and who like games and it is a little bit misleading because everything is compared to the lockdown year. So, of course, things look like [ __ ] when you compare it to 2020, 2021, and like even the 2022. But there were some interesting facts like Embracer Group had 78 acquisitions and spent $14 billion. That's 75% of all pretty much like consolidator capital deployed. And then it it had this interesting graph that that looks at organic growth. This this is a growth the company achieves by increasing output and enhancing sales internally. So basically what they do how that drives growth versus what they acquire and how that acquired piece overall increases their growth and when you look at the curves it it pretty much shows that apart from team 17 the

organic growth is down for all the consolidators. So Chris do you have any comments on this one? Look go back to the tapes right this is exactly what I said. I said, "These acquisitions make no sense because they can't do organic growth." Stillfront, particularly Stillfront and Embracer, right? There's just no way that these acquisitions can make games that are contemporary and competitive in this market because the teams that they were acquiring were not great teams, right? With the exception of a few. This was the thesis, right? For all the reasons that I've said millions of times. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, this makes sense. And you're right, but yeah, if you look at the stock prices of all these things, which I thought I think they missed, they didn't do this in the in the report that I saw anyway, I mean, it's even more dramatic, right? Um, in terms of of the fails since 2020 and 2021. Yeah. And then to add to this, like Eric, you said multiple times that they don't have an organization to drive all these different studios. And essentially what you're trying to do is like when you bring a studio in, it becomes more

efficient as it's part of your organization that creates that organic growth as well. But these studios were kind of like these sort of like just aggregators kind of like everybody could run the way they they wanted and Stillfront had these like groups around which they built these centers. So clearly that was a strategy that worked in a booming market but not so much right now. And regarding Embrace Your Group, there was a news that Asodi, which is a French, is this a tabletop gaming company? Yes. Yeah. They they acquired a tabletop gaming company for billions. Anyways, so it's a subsidiary for Racer Group and they raised almost a billion dollars through a mix of fixed and floating rate senior secured notes and additionally they secured also 150 million of revolving credit facility. So these new raised funds will primarily repay Asmodesy's already $1 billion bridge facility and the financing activity comes as the company prepares for its separation from Embracer Group

scheduled for April 25 amid plans to receive a 400 million loan from parent company. So a lot of money is moving around. Chris, do you know what this all means? It seems like just putting hundreds of millions everywhere. When can we talk about games? Yeah. I just want to understand like what All right. All right. Yeah. No, I mean I look look I I don't know what the hell is happening in Europe that they're still funding this this debacle, but uh I mean they're look like they're refinancing their debt. That's what it looks like. But why people are still investing in this thing? Although Asthod is a great business like it is a great cash flow business. It's very solid. It's, you know, it's not a gaming business. It's just, you know, retail business. So I don't know. they can keep doing what they're doing, but the company is success is based upon the games that they have in development, which we talked about last week, and we'll see if um they can execute against those. All right, Tencent has acquired a maj majority stake in Chinese developer Curo Games. They're the ones that built

Weathering Waves, which I don't think did all that well, frankly. I guess it had a good start, but yeah, their ownership is now like 50% 51%. So, this is basically a wholly well a owned subsidiary of Tencent at this point. So that happened. Chinese studio Lilith game. I don't even know this game. Did you guys follow Project Party? But anyway, no, I don't remember this at all, but they laid off 40 of their 100 employees for this Project Party team based upon lukewarm performance for the beta test, which again, I had not heard of this game. So, I thought that was interesting. They said that they haven't cancelled the game outright, but they're retooling it. And so Ubisoft just announced actually yesterday that Next Defiant Call of Duty like shooter released in May 2024 is shutting down. So just for like context of performance, they announced about 10 million players 2 weeks from launch. So it was exciting launch period and it was roughly similar to the finals in terms of the amount of players that it got and even Ubie was pushing back through the last 6 months

that it was outperforming expectations. But as you could see from data, they lost about 85% of their MAU by August and then the game continued to fall from there. We covered a lot of the reasons for this in the PVP shooter podcast, but the reality was similar to Spectre, similar to finals. You just can't go after the king. You can't go after Call of Duty without top-notch differentiation and just going guns blazing with live content. And this is being paired with CDOS's being shut down, unfortunately. So Ubisoft San Francisco and Ubisoft Osaka both which worked on the game will be shut down and skepticalized there like San Francisco and Oaka those cost centers right to scale up there for a PVP shooter with the content treadmill just doesn't make sense. Yeah, I totally forgot they were all based here. I mean a lot of them were based here in San Francisco. Wow. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, they raked up. This one wasn't surprising

unfortunately. This one's another one. and we'll get into a bunch of the news in terms of upcoming PC console games, but it's just like there's another wave of, you know, exciting releases and we've got to see some of these games stacked out. Um, and unfortunately just so many of them have that spike and then just shark fin immediately and can't sustain. I have a question regarding this like like it seems like when a AAA publisher like as somebody who's used to publishing paid games especially in their business model really evolves around that of you know the hype getting most of your money in the first couple of weeks like when they launch free-to-play games is it so that they just expect the similar type of returns like that's how their business models and and expectations are bu and when that doesn't happen it's like no mercy like this studio is literally shut down immediately like we're talking about weeks No, it's not the crux of it. The crux of it is like like Ubisoft is fine with a multi-year horizon payback window for a game, right? Like even some premium

games have that type of recoup curve. The issue is is like when you put all of your marketing budgets right on launch, right, on top of the high dev costs, right, you have sunk so deep into your P&L. And all of these games live or die based on retention. So, usually when I'm looking at these PC console games, it's like just look at retention. If they have that retention, then we've got something interesting here. But so many of them can create these interesting spikes. Like 15 million players and a month is a good number for PC console. Yeah. But retention's not there and that it doesn't matter. So this actually speaks to like my continual point in the back of my mind around there is no effective way that these games can validate retention before launch. And yet they're willing to spend all that dev budget, all that marketing budget on launch. State the obvious. this is not mobile, right? This is not something you're acquiring users over a time with

user acquisition ecosystem. It's like the expectation is that perhaps they can build it over time or something like that, but that's just not the way it works on console PC. You really got your one shot to attract them and keep them. Um, and and it's not working for the majority of these games. It's not something you can just keep reiterating on over time. It's all or nothing. Right. Right. launch, you you've got to get that escape velocity at launch to get to a point that you can even sustain and then we can talk about growth from there. Apex obviously did a lot of work in the first few months to get that thing back up to speed, but it was a different time and in a different era and the expectation of the consumer was not where it is now. And so like you just can't replicate that going forward. Absolutely. No, it feels like the challenge that they're having is they're getting the eyeballs and they're getting the, you know, the attention to your 15 million point. The challenge very astutely to your point is retention and how do you keep them in a world of, you know, players have so many other things happening. So many great games are

coming out. How do you keep these people? And I think, you know, on Phil's podcast that he did with the GM of the team studio that's running Delta Force, you know, like the amount of content that they do for live service seems to be one of the ways that you have to win, you've got to just really invest in highquality live ops in order to be if you're going to do freeto play or you do what Pal World did is, hey, we're gonna like, you know, we're just not going to give a [ __ ] about retention and just be a great premium game and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's good. It works. Maybe that's a strategy for maybe not a AAA company, but maybe a double A or a single A company is like, hey, maybe I'll do that. The problem that I have with the like, hey, we're just going to like launch a [ __ ] ton of live content is uh a I don't think you validated like the value of that live content. So, you could end up spending a ton of money on stuff that's not that valuable to players. Also, like as we're talking

about with with Supervi and we talked about with Spectre Divide, we're talking about like 90 million investments into these games just to get them to launch. And now we're saying, hey, you've got to double up on your live ops. So now we're talking like, okay, double that number in order to make sure that you can get enough live content guns blazing at launch. And then still like Multiverse, the 2.0 release is a good example of this. like they came out guns blazing in terms of content, but underlying all that still was that weaker retention. So, you're just kind of ratcheting up your risk if that retention isn't there in the first place. How do they get a better handle on retention then? That's a good question. How do people know? I mean, is this the new white whale of like the challenge we're all facing? This is the thing that to be honest like every GDC that I've been talking with a lot of developers that operate in the PC console space. This is the like the bell that I've been ringing as well as like the big brainstorm point that I've been having with developers of like how do we do this better so we can talk about like we can actually validate retention

before launch. I've been talking about this for like five years with GDC if it's been the thing on top of my mind. Uh let's move on to a little bit more positive news. So Pokemon and the trading card game. So, a quick check-in on this. So, Appmagic just has been reporting that they have surpassed 200 million since its launch. Looking at Sensor Tower, that's estimated at about 144 million net. Obviously, 200 million gross after 30 days. And comparing that to Pokémon Go at 200 million net after 30 days. So, to this, like Pokémon Go was a monster outcome. This is a monster outcome. It's just incredible. Look, I mean, it's crushing right now. I'm hoping they can maintain it, right? Like we they hit some kind of apex recently, but like it's so high like and I talked to people that are playing the game and they basically feel that they can continue to deliver more and more creatures, I guess, whatever the [ __ ] you call them and and continue to do the upgrade evo path for this game and keep it going. And I think it's a real

testimony not to Pokemon Company, but for to DNA, which which I think is the one that's the primary responsible for the the design of this thing, which has been long in the works, as we talked about a few weeks ago. So, I have far more faith in DNA than I do in Pokemon Company to execute against this type of mobile game. So, if they can operate this like they did with Fire Emblem Heroes, right? Like then we've got something here. They've got all the ingredients. A great launch. Now, let's let's start live operating. Obviously, gotcha works, you know, like So, Crest, I channeled you and I looked at Sensor Tower in the last 30 days, tier one West, and so Pokemon has jumped to the number five top revenue game with 60 million according to Sensor Tower. So, you've got number one is Monopoly Go, Royal Match, Roblox, Candy Crush, and then Pokemon, which has now jumped ahead of Last War Survival from the, you know, the Forex category. So from a marketing perspective, it looks like they're running on 14 ad networks, you know,

with ADM Mob, you know, obviously Google leading the share of voice. You know, when you go into Censor Tower, you can kind of see the ads, what share of voice are they getting. You can kind of get a sense of like what ads are working for them and, you know, where they're marketing. And so they have a lot of ads with a lot of, you know, a pretty evenly split share of voice, which means that they've got a lot of ads that are working. And basically, you know, the creative kind of writes itself, obviously, especially because there hasn't really been a Pokemon mobile game in the trading guard space. Obviously, Pokemon Go is, you know, it's a very different thing that has been out for a very long time. And so, you know, in my head, this is like the easiest game of all time to market because basically what they keep doing is showing you opening Pokemon packs. They show beautiful cards with all of the cool animation and then they keep the Pokemon logo on the screen at all time. Again, like it's not rocket science, but it's kind of brilliant. If you're listening, here's my next creative idea is put

people in Pokemon costumes like furries and then show them doing UGC things opening the card packs, right? Like it's just like that's the next evolution. And I mean, you know, I was Pluto at Disneyland during um I did this leadership training thing when I used to work at Disney. I got to be Pluto. Honestly, it was actually one of the best experiences of my life. Really cool. That's a Disney character. So, the the quick story on this is so it's just 20 minutes and you go in the back and they it's like super secret and they put you in the costume. I happen to have the the body to be Pluto. Like, you have to be a certain size to be each one of the characters. And so, all of my other like co-workers were like the shitty characters. Like I'm not I'm not even I'm not even touching that by the way that that comment. But well, it's your sizing. It's like how tall are you? Because the costumes are a certain size. Like you don't change the shape of Pluto. It just happens to be I fit into that costume. And so, you know, they train you a little bit and you put your hand into the paw and you actually you look through the mouth. And by the way,

please don't tell your kids, everyone, that human beings are inside these costumes. You're not allowed to tell them that. But so I go out and it's like sweltering. It's in Anaheim. And this little girl in a wheelchair rolls up and she looks at me and she says, "Bluto, you're my favorite." And inside the costume, I start balling because for this moment in time, this little girl in this wheelchair completely forgets everything. And the look on her face, I was like, "This is the Disney magic right here." And I actually somebody took an old school Polaroid of this because this was like, you know, 2006 or seven or something like that. And so I actually I still have that. I kind of like put it up and reminds me of like the impact that we have. Sometimes we forget about what we do every day is we make these games that put a smile on people's face and and actually kind of bring joy. And so sometimes I think we forget that.

Anyway, so that was my segue into why they should put people in Pokemon costumes and film them and put them in ads and make a ton of money. So, Pokemon, good job on like basically having creative that writes itself. So, let's talk about another game that is also has some really interesting marketing. So, throwing it back to you, Adam, for uh what Habby's got going on. Yeah. So, Habby is uh having a moment with really two big launches, right? Capy Bargo and Archer 2. So Capy Bargo according to Sensor Tower sustaining at about 600K a day. Archer 2 launching and reaching similar highs now. And both sort of grew Dow pretty quick and now sustaining. Cabi Bar Go very interesting hybrid sort of idol RPG and even like casino battler like very very randomization mechanics. I'm a big plus one to the two and a half gamers podcast. We did a great deconstruction

of Capy Bargo as well as Archer 2. So definitely recommend their podcast to go deep. It's just showing that there continues to be space to innovate with smart hybridization on mobile that Cabi Bargo just shows there's continues to be open lanes and it's still one to watch. So the one thing is with Capibar Go if you do look a little bit underneath the numbers because they did a staggered launch the US actually came a little bit later when you start to break out their active player base and revenue you're seeing some softness there especially in those countries that they launched in early so this is something that we need to watch just to see if they can actually stack WOW and DAO and continue to climb from here but Archerro still being now their second launch still too early to call but both sort of show very strong launch performance versus Archerro and about half the size of Survivor.io. Ju just to be clear, Archer 2 is still not launched, right? It's only in selected countries. I just took a look again at, you know, some of their

creative. Just wanted to see what was going on. The end cards are super adorable. The look of the characters is really appealing and differentiated. And so, I think that was fun. But what was really kind of piqued my interest was one of their top ads from a share a voice perspective looked like it had a code showing you, you know, the different characters in their badass S tier mode. And as many of us know, it's can be difficult to input codes directly into a mobile game, mainly because Apple is just kind of a a pain in the ass on this. And so I just did a little like sleuth thing and I'm like, wait, is that like a real code and can you actually put that in? And so when you go to a website called gift.copybargo.io, it's a little bit convoluted, but you take your player ID, you you you go to the code redemption website, you redeem your code, and your rewards pop up inside of your in-game mailbox. So in theory, I actually, you know, love these code capabilities. I've ran a bunch of these tests in the past

and you know number one is I was actually at Scopi back in the day when we I was on WWE Champions and we would do TV ads with WWE. We would put the codes up on the screen and but you could only do it on Android at the time which kind of like pissed off half our consumers and that's why I mentioned that Apple was a pain in the ass. But number one is you're able to show like a KPI on engagement for your ads and your execs who want to see hey how did these different things do? if you're not doing traditional performance marketing, you can use them in TV ads or you can use them in other kinds of marketing to kind of have a little bit of a performance KPI. And number two is the community absolutely loves this. You've created a treasure hunt for them. Everyone's trying to go collect all the codes. What's this code unlock? Many times they're limited time offers and so you're incentivizing like engagement on a limited time basis. And the sentiment that comes about is really great because you're giving away free [ __ ] and people like when you give away free [ __ ] So,

you know, kudos to them for like a really interesting way to, you know, go after marketing and blend, you know, this code redemption with uh traditional performance marketing. So, it was pretty cool. Step into the future of game monetization with Exola, the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach and revenue. Exola provides a robust suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition, demanded subscriptions, and streamline payment solutions worldwide. Unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized, secure payment architecture and dedicated support team. Exola, empowering game developers to achieve global [Music] success. This podcast is brought to you by Apps Flyier. In today's digital world, understanding your app's journey from discovery to download is more than

just insightful. It's essential. Enter Appslier, 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 Flyier, that's your new reality. Dive deep into datadriven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app. Appslier, where your app's potential meets performance. All right, Path of Exile 2, Teler, back to you. So, Path of Exile 2 is releasing in early access on December 6th. Uh, personally, I'm actually very excited for this one. Path of Exile 1 is just a incredibly well-crafted game. If you haven't already, watch their GDC video on their learnings and study their expansion design, especially if you're in the PVE space. They do some very impressive things about how much they read next. What I'm finding interesting about this release though is their approach to launch. So we were talking

about like, okay, how do games properly have launches? And actually in PVE space, they've notoriously had very bad launches. A good example here is actually Diablo, which had a very rough launch, took about four seasons to fix it. And despite sort of extensive pre-launch testing, betas, influencers ripping apart their endgame, they still had that struggle. Path of Exile is going into early access. And for all intents and purposes, early access for these games typically is your launch. Very rarely you can have a 1.0 release after an early access release, creating a larger spike. So the way that they're approaching this is that their early access will be paid only for a while. They're basically saying sometime in 2025. So creating a paid soft launch, which gives them access to a limited selection of content classes as they go live, hopefully allows them to perfect the game, and then create a big going free 1.0 no beat in the future when retention and loot is where it needs to be. So, personally, big hopes for this

one. I hope they can ride the wave actually that Diablo 4 created and expand that dungeon crawler and looter market. What is the business model once they go freeto play? Is it a pure cosmetic or is it pay to win? I'm assuming it's the same thing as Path of Exile 1, which is cos pure cosmetic. But beyond that, beyond just Path of Exile 2, there actually is a ton of PC console releases coming out. So, on December 6th, Marvel Rivals from Netis is coming out, a hero shooter with Marvel characters. They're going gang busters with Marvel partnerships. What was crazy actually, there was ads in Marvel Snap for Marvel Rivals, and they're even having a Fortnite partnership coming up. But wow, just to spite them, Delta Force from Tivy is coming out just before on December 5th. It came today. I think it launched today. Oh, like like Yeah. Yeah, it comes out the 5th, but like it basically comes out on the 5th. There might be some time zone things going time zone thing. Yeah, maybe that's what's going on. The past over there in the US. Yeah, sorry. Um,

but Delta Force obviously is a very competent like Battlefield and Tarov mixed game. I would like us to make some predictions on the battle of the Eastern Shooters. So Netty's versus, you know, Timmyi and Marvel Rivals versus Delta Force, hero shooter versus the battlefield extraction genre, you know, Paul versus Tyson. Uh, too soon. Did anyone watch Paul versus Tyson? Did you Did you watch the fight? No. I'm a I'm a purist. I love fight sports. I will not watch that that debacle. It was very sad. I was very pumped to see Mike Tyson again. That is why I did not watch it. Yeah. and it was a [ __ ] show. So, I think I told you like my wife works at Fox and so Fox Sports is a very big deal. And so, they were all making fun of just how bad like Netflix was at broadcasting the sporting event. It went down many times. And so, anyway, so back to this. I think this is a super hard call to pick which one of these kind of

wins this battle royale over the next couple of days. Not actually a battle royale because it's a Battlefield kind of game. Wrong pun. So there's been so much positive buzz with Rivals. It's been in beta over the last kind of year. TEI is also, you know, great because of what they do with Call of Duty Mobile. And you know what I learned from Phil's podcast was that the GM of the T-Mi studio who did Delta Force said that the team decided to pivot from mobile first to PC console when they realized it was really hard for them to get devs to do the quality of game that they wanted. And so they actually shifted to do PC console first and which is why that's what you the launch that you're seeing this week and mobile comes like next year. So they actually delayed that. And so this is like a PC console versus PC console. But if I had to bet I don't know what you guys think but I'm going to go with Delta Force because Marvel Rivals has tough comparison to Overwatch. Everyone

all day long is like but versus Overwatch. And now there's a new player with Tranova who which is the anime hero shooter and who knows if that's going to last but that just launched and is getting a lot of attention. And so Overwatch players will likely give rivals a bit of a shot but at the end of the day they always go back. So one of the things that I've learned when we were on League were always facing competition. you know, Fortnite launching or Overwatch launching or any of these other big games, Apex when that launched, we kind of see them always come back home and they always, you know, they go take a vacation, try the new thing, bring their friends, you know, maybe a month later or so, people come back to the triedand-true champion. And I feel like that's what it is with Overwatch. I guess you could say Call of Duty is that kind of in the world of Delta Force, but I I don't know. I I kind of edge in that direction. But anyone have thoughts on that? Like who might win? Yeah. Like I I played Delta Force and I felt that it was a mobile

first game. Like it did feel like it wasn't quite at the same level as a Battlefield or a COD to me. Can I change my This is my personal opinion, but like I still enjoyed playing it with my friends. Marvel Rivals, I didn't get a chance to play the betas. Um, but I I still look pretty skeptical at the the hype during those times because I don't think it's exactly predictive of what will happen at the thing. So, I'll have a think on it and obviously I'll I'll I'll play, but I think it's too hard to call right now. Like the thing with Delta Force 2 is it's going after Tarov and Battlefield. How do you build enough of a big enough audience from that versus Marvel Rivals? I'll take Delta Force because it's on several platforms. If we're doing Steam CCU, we need to figure out. Okay, got it. I I thought this was easy. Like if if one is going to be on mobile, others are not, then it's an easy win. No, I I watched the videos on on Delta Force today because it came out uh at least I saw a

lot of stuff only been being shared by Holtzman and some other folks from Tencent and um they all look really great. It had some interesting elements. Clearly a ton of content. Like these guys don't mess around. Even the launch version has an insane amount of content. And I can only imagine the teams just churning out that content for all the battle passes and any like everything will be good to go to run this game properly and to create further more content. So I wonder how ready the Marva rivals team and how much slower are they than the TV studio. Not only the fact that the the TV studio has ton of experience in working on Lilops games, but also because they're working with a Marvel IP. So you you have that slower what do you call approval is coming out with like 33 characters, right? But I but I do get it that like my instinct will still be with Delta Force cuz I trust that Timmy's going to come out big swinging. But I think with both

of them, I'm still putting my skeptical hat on like, can either of these retain? But that's what I'm excited to see. I'm voting for Marvel Rivals just quickly. I just for some reason I think that that is hitting right now. Yeah. Okay. And yeah, we got the the charts on Nova, Supervive, and Spectre Divide. Spectre Divide is kind of flatlined now. Yeah. Essentially. Um, so keep in mind this is launch aligned. So Spectre Divide launched in I think September, beginning of September. versus Supervive, which just launched. This is from the X League team, TheoryCraft, and has been out since November 21st. What's been impressive is actually the sentiment. So, like Steam reviews well over 90%. Wow. And CCU from launch is implying better than usual retention. We've got the comparison here between Supernova, Astronova, and Spectre Divide. So, you can see that it is sustaining at a higher level. But I think when we start to layer in things like finals and you look at as a percentage of max CCU, it's

basically in line with finals so far. So I think it's still important to continue to track. The challenge here is the scale. The scale remains small. It's about 30k and still has gravity associated with it. So we need to see them sustain their CCU and then start to grow. Overall, I was hoping this would be the story of a game that tapped into the League streamers and had a strong organic pull of the League of Community. And that's what I'm watching for if they can go viral. The challenge here, as we talked about with League heavily China based, they have locked out of China and they've have an entities partnership. So, there's a possibility of a China based relaunch in the future after they've got retention. So, the challenge here is still similar to Spectre, right? like 30k CCU what can China do this is a small team live ops and cosmetic only arto and this is against the expectations of their series A and B raise which was 87.5 million or basically 90 million so what's great it

looks like they've got something retaining out of there which is a very promising sign the challenge is how do you leverage that strong sentiment and really start siphoning that league players so you can scale I'm a little bit puzzled by supervibe like I haven't played it I mean I'm not Chinese. So that's also probably the the reason apparently though that's the 87% of the market. But I'm kind of like puzzled about like what Phil would call what's the game thesis for Supervi because essentially it is a MOA with battle royale component. So the map gets smaller and you're playing a mobile in a little bit of a different way. and was trying to understand like what was the compelling strategy that the founders were chasing here because like on the product side they essentially have a a twist and they have a you know a fraction of the content that League of Legends would have they kind of look similar to me at least to an untrained eyes very much you know the archers the shield characters and very you know similar style of course because it's

mobile and they're coming in with a game that that has a small gameplay twist and they have less content and their marketing is, you know, kind of a like build it and they will come and they've built a great game, but you know, we'll see how long that lasts. So, it's I'm always always wondering when people leave these companies, especially the type of founding team that left Riot, they're very experienced legendary game makers. I think the executive producer was like Halo and then League of Legends for a long time. Yeah, exactly. They raised a ton of money, but still 90 millions is not nearly enough. That's like one episode of Arcane. That's a good one. No, no, but for real, like the question that when Adam was showing the chart is is like they had a great start and now the game is rapidly declining. So, they kind of like need to grind it out and find whatever is that that level and then slowly build from that. And always the question is is like do the founders

want to do that or are they like were there expectation to come out of the gate and kind of start the new League of Legends and and start dominating? Do they have the tenacity to run a smaller game cuz they've been running such a massive games before and like what's the point of running a game with like 10,000 players when before that you were running you know games with millions upon millions of Chinese playing it every day. I don't know. It will be interesting to follow. Of course the the founders are good. Whatever happens, whether this game succeeds or fails, you know, this company is going to get aqua hired. Look, what are we talking about here? Like, there is no [ __ ] market for MOBAs in the West, right? Why are we even talking about this? $90 million for a game that has a target market of like 5% of the overall install base of League, you know? It's like they're playing League. They don't give a [ __ ] about these stuff. Like, there's just no way they can maintain a big enough business to justify a $90 million [ __ ] investment. It's crazy. This crazy talk, you know? Are we just waiting for them to launch in China, right? To see like that's going to be the the last card. But if it's on Steam,

like they can play it, right? I don't know how that works. But unless they're they're able to region lock it, maybe they can. I don't know. But yeah, the what Phil found out was that they have a publishing deal with Netis to publish it correctly or publish it broadly, which you know again like this team knows league and intricately well. They know the opportunity in China, you know, see above the 43 million people watching, you know, the end of season world championships. So that's going to be the big opportunity for them. I think that what I learned I, you know, back in the day at EA, and this is a really long time ago, is I had to work on a competitive MOA title, I think it was called, forgot the name, the code name that because it never made it out of beta. And you know, one of the things when I was there and I probably got in a little bit of trouble is I said, "Listen, I I don't think we should be doing this. I don't think that there is enough room in the market for another

MOA going up against League of Legends and what they have captured." And you know, true to I guess my prediction at the time after we did a bunch of consumer insights was there isn't really another, you know, there really isn't room for this. And so the game actually never made it out of beta and and EA has never gone back and tried to compete in that space. I remember that game. I remember like vaguely. That was almost like 10 years ago. No, it wasn't Stormgate. I mean, the name was called Battlegrounds when I was on it, but I don't remember. there was another name in the beta because it it went into beta after I left and so anyway that that just kind of goes to show you that you know a little bit of what again that was a while ago but it is a tough tough market but again if anyone can do it it is the people that ran nobody can do it no okay well nobody can do it okay fine I was trying to be like like give us a little bit of okay okay let me let me just this is as crystal clear to me as possible like the only way that this is

ever going to work is if they change the business model. If it continues to be cosmetic, non-pay to- win type model, no one's ever going to make a a mark in this business, right? Because there is just no business there. If they try to innovate and create different business model around it, so it's more pay to progress, pay to win, then maybe that gets interesting. But like they just cannot survive on this small audience with a cosmetic economy. Like it just doesn't make any sense, you know? That that playbook does not work. Only works at scale. It only works at scale. I think that's the biggest takeaway is that people don't really realize is that innovation of cosmetics only works when you have billions just players you know yeah but but that's the point these people came from Riot like they know intricately how how the business model works how many players etc and I'm kind of confused is like knowing all of that you know they exit the uh the company that that you know already has this game and they're

like, "We're going to do it again outside of it with fraction of the resources." So, it's a confusing combination. Not because you leave a company to do a similar game outside of it, but just like knowing how impossible pretty much it is to create a mobile that succeeds in the West and then essentially they would have to break it in China with a PC mobile. Yep. And players already have the other choice of Honor of Kings too on mobile. So, not only are you going against League and Wild Rift on mobile and Honor of Kings on mobile and Dota, now you got Yeah, now you got this one. Uh, all right. Well, thanks everyone. Got some great stories for you next week. Uh, take care. Bye. Later. [Applause]