TWIG #312 THE GREATEST WEEK IN F2P. EVER? EVER!

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 312 where we give our game industry Insider takes on the top game industry news stories each week so here's what we got going on in this episode a lot of games talk so there's just an onslaught of game anal I you know was really interesting the the entire year no one's released anything and everyone decided the first two weeks of at the end of November December is when we want want to launch games so we're going to give updates on all of the core games that are launching so Path of Exile 2 Marvel rals Delta Force fortnite's new TX shooter ballistic they just announced that and then really go into free-to-play mobile games Infinity Nikki is apparently out and crushing it with 10 million downloads Royal Kingdom what's going on with Pokemon so lots to cover on the game side of things today hi everyone I'm Jen donaho I'm the marketing and Publishing role on the

squad RPG that we call Twig Phil black comrade in the free-to-play revolution raising my banner today and Eric Crest I am head of strategy and investing in this hodgepodge of morons that we are doing this podcast with and Adam teler product guy let's just go with that ending off with some real energy here this is good you can be a comrade too no definitely not open ranks oh all right well thank you for playing along everybody so I wanted to kick it off and just say thanks to a buddy of mine who works at Amazon games because he invited me to a screening of secret level so this is a show on Amazon Prime that's a CGI animated kind of mini episode group of mini episodes and it's based on famous game IP so each episode is a different IP so they showed us Eight Episodes it was Dungeons and Dragons sefue New World Arnold Schwarzenegger was voicing the main

character Unreal Tournament Warhammer 4 dek Pac-Man Crossfire and armored Core had Kiana Reeves as the main Mech pilot guy so it released on December 10th those Eight Episodes and the next batch is on December 17th I highly recommend it amazing CGI kind of rivaling Arcane levels of CGI in a way very very fan oriented if you're a fan of these IPS I think you're going to love it I think that the Pac-Man episode was deeply disturbing like not at all what you expect it was really [ __ ] up actually and I imagine it's going to be polarizing so you should watch it just because it's weird but Warhammer 4 dek I think stole you know stole every reward it was really amazing and I went and looked and just see if anyone was talking about it and on IGN there were like 3,000 people who voted on the episodes already who have been watching it and almost half said that for Warhammer was the best one so anyone else heard of this like I actually didn't

this one also has the Concord episode right it has the Concord episode did that get released yeah yeah because they they must have signed it before I think there's like a whole episode of just Sony too like or just PlayStation stuff I haven't looked at the next eight I know Mega Man is coming in the next eight but I don't know about Concord that yeah yeah Concord is definitely one of the IPS that they yep it was successful you know we would have had a trans media story at this point but instead I'm just waiting for Phil's and analysis to see all of the trans media spikes that happen because of each one of these episodes I mean this is an amazing marketing if you're a movie exact like this is just back toward Pilots you just subsidize this stuff right that's all this is is like which one gets them upick all right let's let's turn into a full series it's just a pilot go but these are really really high res you know like really high quality 9 Minute 10 minute type Pilots though I it's not cheap I wouldn't think but I was just kind of wandering around like

the different services and I Came Upon This and I was like the first one is like a total DND D like super nerd like I mean I was like I was hooked my wife looked at me like I was some kind of [ __ ] alien watching this thing but like it was awesome so I've been watching him this morning as well I haven't got to the Warhammer one yet but all all of them were pretty good actually the Schwarzenegger one is probably the worst it yeah I think that's what kind of people voted on I was like oh and I feel sad CU my buddy that dude can't act to save his goddamn life you know what I mean slow down I I can't have any of this Arnold bashing what are you talking about True Lies no no no so voice Jingle All The Way twins are you defending acting like how can you say I'm not saying he's not successful he does he brings in the money dude but the guy cannot act to save his life and then when you do voice you got to learn how to act right he pivoted from Comedy to Comedy from his action movies did you not see twins that was a a brilliant movie dude are you being serous right now like I read all

00 understand how either of you guys have time to watch a TV show at this point because the amount of games that are launching right now there's no time for TV there's no time for TV right it back yeah that was my segue to get you off of Arnold take it let's move forward yeah that's good Arnold schwarzen is a great man though I will give you that but interesting documentary too on [Music] Netflix kickass liveops need kickass tools that's where heroic Labs comes in they just released a massive update to their sator liveops platform and having done my research I can say with confidence that it's second to none in a single product you get everything you need including event captur player segmentation feature Flags remote configuration AB testing experimentation live events calendar messaging retention grafing analytics and so much more if you're serious about running live services in a game get serious about the

tools you use connect with heroic labs and make some serious cheese with your [Music] liveops okay let's get to Shilling Phil yes mishko would like you to know that the famous game exec Supper Club is hitting the road once again and it's going to be on Sunday the 19th of January at 6: pm at the sh ditch Soho house and I can tell you shitch is a really cool part of London I'm sure the Soho House sounds even cooler it's the night before PGC London it's invite only of course it's limited to 40 people it's who you'd expect at these events now its Founders Zig zacs its product and marketing leaders their sign up links in the Weekly Newsletter and the DF slack Mishka also has two podcasts out recently one is with Ken Nordstrom the swed who lives in Spain about his book up down uh up down up which came out earlier this year and now has an audio recording an audio version I believe as well and they recorded a podcast

together when they were at slush in Helsinki those are always the best podcasts with michiga in my opinion is when he's in a room talking to someone there also is an the audio book also has clips from you Eric that's damn right dude and Laura endorsement I'm a star yes uh there is also a podcast that Mishka just did on attribution with Tik Tok and apps fer which I've got in my queue I'm very excited to listen to that one and on the blog Tiffany Keller wrote a awesome piece on hybrid monetization and how it may be a welcome Refuge after Gaming's fling with direct to Consumer web stores so let's see how I don't know about that fling with director I wouldn't know what a fling I would not either I think that's the future anyway Corrections Adam has a couple yeah so just two quick ones I mentioned last week that Path of Exile is cosmetic only so that was wrong path Exile does sell inventory slots which is critical in the end game so I appreciate get to call it there Path of Exile 2 so

far looks to be repeating this Playbook but still I'm going to call it that it's a pretty similar Insight Path of Exile I believe has lower ARP Mau than Warframe Destiny and Warcraft so I believe it's clever it allows them to avoid pay to wind clams but it's just not a deep spend system also talked about handheld systems mentioned PlayStation portal with 500k units sold that was a cirana or NPD us only number uh unfortunately I don't have the number for Global selling or selser on that one those are my two Corrections thank you all right so I just want to do one quick kind of industry story before we do a few investment m&a things so in the world of game journalism they're just getting their ass kicked right now so there are more changes coming according to an outlet called aftermath they did a little behind the scenes interviewing with some folks from game industry. Biz and IGN so in late October

zff Davis who owns those two outlets and also owns Humble Bumble put out a kind of a notice to the staff and offer and saying hey our organic revenue is down it's down 10% since 2021 and we need to do some Cuts does anyone want to you know volunteer to leave and it sounds like a lot of people actually did do that if not already were being laid off so it's very sad to hear that a lot of the folks that I think the the that do the game industry. Biz podcast were two of those folks who just said that they were leaving it sounds like they're left with like one full-time employee there like I love game industry. Biz like I use it a lot and research for this I hope they can stick around so anyway sad state of video game journalism our heart goes out to those folks hope they can uh land in a really good spot they have like I think 15 plus years of experience it's sad to hear this all right let's go to investments in m&a crush you want to take this yeah I'll just do quickly some

kind of bad news on some of the job reduction front outrider studio people can fly just cut 120 jobs this follows like 30 jobs in January they basically just said that there were some cancelling some projects but they're still currently working on I think an unannounced Microsoft Project this feels like the studio is ready to get acquired at this point but you know that's just speculation on my part also life is strange Duke Studio deck 9 confires another L rof it's not disclosed they laid off 20% of their Workforce in February generally speaking though from talking to many people out there it seems like bigger Publishers are pulling back and canceling third party and second party bets and focusing more on bigger internal projects just is my sense on what's happening out there like at a macro level obviously we saw we see some evidence at the high level like would take to getting rid of their whatever their private Division I think this impacts like

independent ablea and single a Studios not to mention you know the fact that there's really no other funding sources out there available at the moment so that makes it even tougher to run a and single a double A and so I my general thoughts here if you're in the industry or if you're looking for jobs in the industry safest to find jobs at the big companies big Publishers and developers you know double a single a it's gonna be really a tough Market this time I think for the next at least five years until we see an emergence of a new platform where Independents can play and potentially make some money so anyway just kind of a sour end of 2024 um so we we'll see what happens 2025 yeah on that note was kind of interesting in our slack Channel Tina Henderson posted that she's part of like a codev team and because no November and December were kind of slow for business they ended up making a ufn game like a holiday themed ufn game called sprinkles slay Li I was like sprinkle slay ride so

it just I don't know it's interesting that you know maybe the ugc places are someplace that folks can go when they're kind of looking for the next thing to do I you know like bored hang out and just hang out in UTC land if you're Bor yeah let's just is there a business there let's get Ethan levy on the podcast and see what he has to say about that Miss Jen I I'm just saying like you're uh you need something to do that might be something I swear to God Ethan is like banging his head against the wall right now after you said that you know like I'm telling you dude he's yeah anyway well let's talk about games that are really crushing it right now so like I said before lots of new releases everyone was launching like last week this week so we're gonna spend the rest of the time kind of going through all of that big news sorry Indiana Jones probably not going to talk about you even though you got a really good 87 Metacritic on Xbox only and PlayStation's not coming to the spring

by the way but I do see lots of chatter about there's like secret endings and stuff like that in Indiana Jones you guys interested in playing that like no one's talking about that in our circles I'm playing it right now oh you are okay I I played the first couple hours actually it was oh you did it's actually a beautiful game it looks and it's really nostalgic at least at the beginning the opening sequence playing through yeah it's good but just the whole vibe of it is kind of you're like living those movies well and again I haven't played that long but it's beautiful game but I don't think this is going to move the needle per Xbox I'll tell you that much though like this is not like some Mass market like you know bombshell but it's high quality game I did also see it had an eight it had an 87 Metacritic and an 8.7 user score so I thought that was kind of interesting was kind of the same so anyway Phil why don't you take it away and do a little summary for us especially for steam because they're crushing it too right Lord oh Lord it is probably the greatest

twoe stretch in freet toop playay history so we have St Nova which been falling which is this that weird anime kind of paper girl game which came out we got super viive which we've been covering Royal Kingdom we've been covering Infinity Nikki Marvel Rivals Delta Force girls Frontline 2 which unfortunately didn't make the cut for today we'll be back next week with girls front line 2 and Path of Exile a little bit of a cheat on the free to- playay side but kind of havies I I I think there are winners here I think there are immediately some winners that pop out when you look at this group one of them is steam steam has been on the rise for a really long time Eric you keep pointing out that almost all of the increase in users have come from China and we see that reflected in this last weekend where we had this amazing Confluence of events they reached a new all-time high 39.2 million players logged in at the same time incredible for steam so I think they get another crown for continuing to grow and the Chinese government continuing to let them seemingly go unregulated I think the

other winner we have to give out is to dual skew which continues to see a little bit more uplift in China so we had Infinity Nikki which is available on both mobile and console including PC and we also had Delta Force which isn't quite there on the mobile side but we know is gearing up towards that Stova is another example of a game that is dual skew and I'm actually surprised we haven't seen dual skew from superv you know especially when we go over that shocking Riot number which I just can't get out of my head it's completely like altered my world viiew gen that only you know five to 10 percent of legal Revenue comes to be fair a rioter did say that that was incorrect um interesting interesting interesting so I would say dual Skuse seems to be on the rise I think we'll see girls front line too I'll be interested to see whether or not they do a desktop app I'm seeing more mobile games also do direct distribution so net marble had a King Arthur game that actually came out a couple weeks ago which also they just kind of dumped the P PC out for so I

think you got dual skew which seems to be a winner but less so than steam free to play obviously just absolutely dominates this category so welcome to the revolution we continue to March step by step I think the real winner in all this is China by far in a way strova super Vibe even Viet netes and eventually hopefully the Chinese were at least will give him some sort of uptick infinity Nikki uh Marvel Rivals Delta Force girl front line to Path of Exile may be by the kiwis but it's owned by 10cent I mean wow if you're s in China right now you know your GDP numbers may be down but at least like your gaming economy numbers seem to be up what a huge win for them and not just in China but also these games have cross region appeal in the West too so again it's cross Regional now you know it's a truly a global market I think normally we've had the market segmented between not just the East and the West I think Japan has kind of done their own thing but we're starting to see more games go across more different regions and across more different platforms the battlefield is opening well okay easy there tiger right like

these are Chinese developers making games for China right like like these are not like Western developers having success in China like there's a big difference you know and we don't know if the revenue is actually going to follow on like user base is one thing but this is all vanity metrics at this point like if they don't make money who gives a [ __ ] right yeah no that's all fair that's all fair I still think these games at least had uptick in the beginning I I agree with you like so what you don't think these games they're not Western developers that have a peel in China I would be interested to see how Path of Exile does in China yeah me too yeah I think that's out of curiosity but yeah it's not primarily Western developers I mean yeah it's Chinese developers somewhat in the case of infid Nikki it's kind of Japan China but okay I mean that's still a W for China it is a W for China yes yeah I also think the W goes to crossplay PC console crossplay and maybe in some cases crossplay mobile to PC console you

know just it looks like the ability to not necessarily that you're you know playing a mobile person versus a PC console person but it seems like many of these games are having that feature we talked about this a lot before but that seems to be really valuable especially in China where as we know mobile is the dominant way to play if you can pick up and do some things at home on your PC or on your console it seems to be valuable Delta Force is still not on mobile right it is not it is not yet is coming They delayed it I think they announced the delay kind of at the last minute and it's slated for spring 2025 so the only game on this list that's actually crossplatform with mobile is Nikki right Str NOA as well cool yeah let's keep an eye on that um yeah let's take a look at the PC console performance because I think that's been pretty exciting to watch so checking in first on super viive and Stova early signs were that super viive had better underlying retention but now

unfortunately both are clearly showing sort of the usual Decay curve on CCU from launch so unfortunately even for superv where there was early strong signals we're going to start to see that speed up of Decay unfortunately because without meaningful live content and with matchmaking starting to go down we're just seeing a lot of these PVP games start to Decay faster unfortunately and let's then shift to go to Marvel Rivals and Delta Force which I think last time we were talking about bets here and unfortunately we got it wrong Delta Force peaked at about 120k CCU over the weekend Marvel got 480 was it wasn't that my vote it was it was Crest got it Crest got got it okay sorry I got it wrong don't [ __ ] keep being in that you're you're F loser category I was going to say so so what but what did you base it on Eric was it just like it's Marvel it's going to do it it's [ __ ] Marvel dude and it's nety so it wasn't any sort of sophisticated way it was just shooting from but it's also n

like they know what they're doing you know like building onent so it's 10 cent but anyways 4X so 4X in Delta Force and roughly doubling finals launch which is a decent comp it launched at the same time of year so keep in mind this is only steam so console performance for Marvel Rivals is a black box as of now but Marvel did announce that they got 10 million players after about 72 hours which matches Infinity Niki which finals reached after about two weeks and roughly matches Apex Legends so if you think of the curve that Apex Legends had for its install curve so it announced 10 million after about three days You' got 25 million after two weeks 50 million after a month then a 100 million after two years that's that kind of Decay curve so that'll be the comp to see if they can actually reach those Heights or was this a big spike and are they going to start to Decay faster like like we saw with finals so we got this wrong in

terms of which game would have the most CCU we also didn't Define the time scale so keep in mind this is just weekend one we're getting excited here saying this is like the greatest victory for freeto play this is the spike we said the same thing when finals launched do these things actually retain that's the bigger question here right retention dictates what's going to happen next so what's interesting to me when we look at this 4X number is that typical pre-launch PC console metrics didn't predict VG ins sites reported that Delta Force had 20% more wish lists going in GDC Co said that Delta Force had a higher hype score twitch had higher viewership for Delta's betas versus Marvel and also generally Marvel basically went dark after their beta in the summer versus Delta Force had that big beat recently during steamfest so this is where what gave my basis to say like hey I think Delta Force has something here and now we're saying Marvel but also generally

military Shooters tend to do better than other types of Shooters right so if we go back and just ignore the performance you say those are the signals and actually these metrics are imperfect and very Loosely Coraline so I believe the world needs better intent to download Coda Market metrics so we can have better understanding all this hey by the way do you know what the most predictive metric on the planet is Mr crest's brain I was about to say try to find a model that's right this is never going to base it on you yeah never will oh that's funny but but I do I do think there's another lesson here Adam which is like HD you know particularly steam like they're getting scale at launch they're getting downloads like this has been Mobile's problem is that they need to solve for distribution and they've basically been been doing that for the last two years trying to figure out how we can build like the most elaborate fake ad possible it feels like steam I don't want to say ass Sal Discovery but they can put games into the hands of

players they can put games into people's libraries do you think that's a fair claim I don't think so because like what I'm you're looking at it at one point in time right like with mobile we have user acquisition to drive ongoing Discovery post launch which then means there's actually less focus on day one performance you can actually recover post launch right in this case everything is about this launch this is the best moment in time they're going to get the most number of players and then in terms of like the scale right like finals 15 million right like where did that grow to OverWatch 2 getting to like 40 million Apex Legends 75 million like these are amazing outcomes but we're talking about the tippy tippy top here then you're looking at like would you say the same thing about stanova and superv with 30k CCU 40K CCU like that's they did not manage to get that type of scale so I would say like actually PC console has a discovery

problem especially post launch and if you're much yeah a smaller scale skew right that doesn't have the budgets yeah as a marketer I'm like freaked the [ __ ] out when I you just go through your list Adam of all of those really great typically predictive indicators that you're going to do well right wish lists and hype scores and you know all of that I you know I'm just like oh my God like what do I what indicators besides crest's brain do I use as a marketer and and like a demand planner to be like okay like here's what to expect and this is just steam I get it and console probably you know maybe still operates differently but you know I'm I'm a little bit freaked out and then especially you know if I'm Another Hero shooter I might be freaked out and so you know I think I asked you hey from a player insights perspective you know Stan is hearing that deadlock players are talking a lot about Deadlock now this is before this week right so

deadlock is still very much on people's minds OverWatch is still on people's minds I talked last week about how you know players love these Trident true games and then they kind of like vacation in the new games for a month and then come back and so it's going to be really important for us to revisit this entire conversation in January February and see to see what happens but can you walk me through I know you I asked you to pull some data on deadlock versus OverWatch versus Rivals what did you find yes so I thought it would be really interesting to take a look at deadlock Marvel Rivals and OverWatch 2 so the first thing you'll see and if you're following the YouTube version we have a nice little graph of steam PSU is that deadlock has been in a basically a linear decline since September is is actually not looking good at all for deadlock which I'm shocked by I'm shocked it's been this rapid of a decline this quickly and it it continues to decline it hasn't stopped it had start in sep setember it reached a peak

PSU of around 180,000 and now we're looking at what maybe 40,000 and it continues to decline decline decline but there's no content right like I mean they're in like secret oh they're upda no no it's you can go down no no they're releasing content they have new Heroes they yanked the ranked mode which was really bizarre they added like the thing that all Hero Shooters are doing is a basically a test server for new Heroes they're pumping content in the game it's it's certainly not that just been surprised that their grip on retention has slipped that much you take a look at OverWatch 2 OverWatch 2 is actually in a really good place and again we're just looking at steam numbers here so we don't know what's happening on Console but they've been Steady Eddy for a really long time I know we have kind of somewhat of a negative blizzard narrative on the podcast but OverWatch 2 continues to to deliver pretty steady results and of course we see this green line if you can you know zoom out of your eyes and see this green line way up top around 450,000 Peak PSU relative to both deadlock and OverWatch 2 sitting at you

know maybe 50 40,000 and one of the things that I thought was really interesting to see is since the release of Marvel Rivals are we seeing some declines in those other games and that actually does appear to be the case so since Marvel Rivals has come out OverWatch 2 and Deadlock are down about 10% since the release of Marvel Rivals again it's very early you know we go back to the dating analogy everyone may just be on their first date maybe they'll come back to their steady Edie but there does look like there is a causal relationship between the release of Marvel Rivals and OverWatch 2 and Deadlock seeing some decline in PSU and I'm very curious to see whether or not this trend will continue and I can say you know having played a lot of Marvel Rivals this weekend perhaps an obsessive amount of Marvel Rivals I'm ready to call it OverWatch 3 in many regards um this really is a hero shooter uh it's the right category to put it in you know it's tough to put deadlock in this category because takes a lot more of the traditional MOBA

Stakes it it has creeps it has an in-game shop Marvel Rivals doesn't have any of those things it really is you know a character hero shooter action Arena game I think you're splitting hairs like I I think right now it's a little too early to call about how it's going to be impacting those other games in general games tend to when they launch especially on like a Thursday they'll get that initial bump over the weekend and then in terms of like OverWatch 2 deadlock I've got to see that in terms of what was their Trend beforehand and I got to see it on a long a larger scale because you're seeing already like in general those games where they a little bit flat or declining I I think we're splitting harison just looking at these five days not to mention OverWatch is really OverWatch 2 was released on Steam I think like nine months after it's encouraging that for that smaller Niche steam audience that they're stable I agree with fil but in general in general yeah that's like most I would assume of Their audience is going to be on P net and then there's going to be a section that's on Steam and a section that's on

Console yeah no I I think that's totally fair I think we're we're seeing something I would say move your priors a little bit uh if we continue to see this move your priors a lot um but I think a little bit is appropriate for now the other thing that was pretty interesting was to take a look at the Marvel Rivals country distribution because this was a global release from what I understand and China's only clocking at about 12% of the player Base According to video game insights and the United States is speaking 25% and Australia number three didn't know we had a lot of Marvel heads out there that's unique to see again I would also on this one watch it stabilize because especially on on freeo playay stuff the way that they're tracking this stuff it's not perfect so we should watch this trend over time I wouldn't get caught too much on the Australian number yeah the characters look I think they've nailed that initial funnel so like I'm gonna guess but like you know product terms the D1 to D7 is going to look pretty strong on this what

I'm more worried about what I'm thinking more around is their enduring H hooks because like look finals also had a really strong up front funnel like was super exciting to play right from the beginning was really unique but it's all about that enduring piece now like can they actually retain from this top can they do better than what Apex did from their launch and really be able to sustain and so from my sense for my little bits of playing I think they've got a strong roster I like the call that they did with the amount of players that they characters that came out right from the beginning because there's a ton of characters that I can be trying out mastering all the same time rather than paying or or waiting a ton of time in order to get access to them so I think that they're going to get that initial burst of Engagement quite strong but I think the trade-off there is there's just not a lot to chase after in this game besides sort of battle passes and quests and also I'm thinking about like skill curve and skill sealing like after D7 which it hasn't even happened for me yet is there real things that I'm trying

to be getting better and better and better at right now it feels a bit shallow to me I feel like that's probably to do with the types of characters that I'm creating because I'm tending to go to like Venom like pretty simple characters to play as so I've got to try out some of the higher skill players characters but like that's where I'm trying to figure out the other thing here is like I was chatting with Chris sides who did the PVP podcast I think it's a lot to do with let's quote unquote Chris Sid's trademark love bombing right now now which is are they going to be coming out with a fast Cadence of high quality live content which I believe is the plan and how valuable is that content can to be coming out because I think they could actually get away with a lower skill ceiling like less enduring High skill and actually lean in more on live content and then this thing could retain pretty well that's my take I really want to agree with you I played a lot this weekend I would say the thing I'm most curious about is how this performs on Console that's really where I'd put my bet because it's a third person rather than a first person game and there's a

lot of melee combat I think particularly with amss you can be pretty generous here so I'm very curious to see if we can get some console numbers on this you know consoles have always been tricky for first-person shooters but I think for a game like this I think the the the GamePad is completely appropriate so I'm very curious to see how this does and I think there's just an audience fit for an IP like this on Console even more so than PC so so I I I wonder if it will be able to survive on PC I'm shocked that isn't more monetization in the game there's almost nothing there's like there's some Cosmetics you can buy but they're choosing not to monetize Heroes the progression systems to your point basically don't exist uh there's very little to your point to chase after I was surprised they couldn't even throw me a Apex Legends style Banner system with stat tracking you know a bunch of different slots there's almost nothing and the the thing that's made me check my priors on this though is if we go back and we think about when OverWatch launched I mean even to this day to some degree OverWatch never really had that

much progression I mean there was basically account level progression which added a star to your profile and you'd occasionally get some loot boxes which would give you I guess some crafting currency but OverWatch has always been really Bare Bones on the systems design too I mean it was really late where they introduced the gold guns in competitive but they didn't have a lot to chase after either to challenge that though like we've watched all of these games flop in this space right and now we're thinking about what takes to compete in 2024 OverWatch one in 2016 right like I feel like the bar has to be higher than that yeah right OverWatch was a premium game they they would have had the benefit of being premium game from it's still retaining I mean it's still still retained yeah I mean are you talking about OverWatch 2 at launch or you talking about OverWatch one at launch OverWatch one yeah like OverWatch 2 did come out with additional progression Victors at their launch which then allowed them to retain what what what else do they really have at overw OverWatch 2 I thought they had a

bunch of like event passes and stuff like that on top of things I mean it's it's it's always been kind of and they also had all the features coming over from OverWatch one yeah I I just thought there would be more Chinese style mization and progression systems in Marvel Rivals and they really backed away from all that when we talk about Delta Force they leaned into the Chinese element there but this feels very westernized I I'm very surprised that Mar that n's kind of pulled back on this game I bet it was more of a license or problem than it was Net's willingness to you know do predatory monetization but keep when when I'm talking like like long-term retention you don't have to do it with progression systems like RPG progression or passes it's also things like skill yes yes and I actually think that's where this game has problems is Mastery you know are the characters interesting ex that's where I'm like that's where I'm more concerned they have so much good [ __ ] like if I'm rocket I can climb on to Groot like they have all these cool teamup abilities they have seasonal bonus they have all this cool [ __ ] and

yet like it doesn't feel like it matters that much in my actual moment to moment Mastery of the character it still feels like a very surface level sorry go ahead Jen yeah well that's exactly what I wanted to touch on from a kind of like that marketing perspective of like all right what's your USPS what's your point of differentiation and when I really looked at this game and you know had the opportunity to actually talk to a lot of players in different elements they said two things one is 's this thing with destructible environments that changes the maps and number two were the team ups and so you and another hero can kind of team up and that and those two things were very different than the core playay of OverWatch now the other thing that is interesting and I wanted to actually ask you so you've got those two things is are we in the honeymoon phase where there is no meta there is no play The Meta so the challenge in OverWatch is it is very difficult for new people to come into OverWatch because if you don't know how to play The Meta and what role you have to play and how you have to play that role all of those

people are like [ __ ] this I'm out because I'm getting yelled at but in Rivals like no one knows what that is yet and so it's still really welcoming you still have a skilled chance of competing because people haven't figured it out is that part of the like one month two month evaluation and that if people start like getting to their being a meta does that start ejecting organ rejection because people are like o now I'm getting yelled at is that something that maybe happened in rivals or other games I don't know kind of posing that to product guy and monetization guy I think we are in a honeymoon phase I agree with you on that point and that's why I want to watch things over the next couple weeks to give a real assessment of like what that trajectory looks like a from just playing it enough but like in general all PVP games have an issue of like how much work does it get to understand the meta and get up to that point but the thing that keeps going back of my mind is like you look at the most successful games in the space that

onboarding funnel of new players and making sure that they're having a great time within the thing is actually not the most important funnel the most important funnel is that they have a critical mass of very high skill players and those players have a very long Mastery tur those new players being able to learn what the meta is typically there's a shortcut which is there's an S tier character or an S tier build that people can Google and then they play that build and they feel competent enough in the game and then now they're attached and that happens with most games even like card games where there's always clever designers will make sure that there's always a few easy to reach for builds or characters that then allows those players to have that quicker speed up to the end game that then as The Meta shifts now they've got to shift to another character that's higher skill so I don't see that as a huge challenge but I'll pass into Phil no I I think you're right Adam I mean everyone's going to solve for equal at some point and the thing is that all the characters are available for everyone

they've chosen not to monetize on characters and that actually makes the meta or the equilibrium emerge faster because everyone has access to everything I think Marvel snap tried to actually go after this with their collection level system and their series system on how they distributed cards I think they really wanted to make sure that not everyone had the same set of cards so that you would get a diverse meta as you started to progress and that introduced a lot of other problems that they're still trying to get out of yeah I I I largely agree with with Adam on this one I don't think it's a problem though if there's a meta I mean don't play competitive you don't play casual well you know the Crest llm is basically predicting that this thing is going to die very fast oh okay theet CCU on day one and it will die fast how fast specifically how fast Chris one or two months in two months will be they'll be at like less than a quarter of their Peak CCU all right okay that is a good bet yeah I love it yeah yeah no I in the past I've seen wait a

minute the llm is calculating again yeah that's right that's right that's right 25% Peak CCU chat GPT 401 what's the one that like takes longer if Crest gets this Crest will be an input in my forecast from now on this is it this is really this is the bar I think the final thing is there's some really interesting Marvel crell and Phil pulled couple of or somebody pulled a couple of really interesting kind of releases that showed how Marvel and the other games were in a sense promoting the launch for this so little free marketing hold on Jen slow down because you guys mentioned this last podcast and I was scream screaming at the podcast so there's a Marvel rival crossovers in Marvel snap Marvel Puzzle Quest future fight future fight and even fortnite hold on what what on can can Marvel dictate that they want crossovers for their IP in these other games if I'm Ben bro and I'm running Marvel snap I

don't want to do free user acquisition for Marvel Rivals if I run Marvel Puzzle Quest if I'm demerge or whoever owns that game now I don't want to be doing UA for other people how do the how does you even do this as an IP holder how does this even come together what what is this I imagine that the Marvel folks put pull that together as a way to to help them now I agree like if I'm can they mandate uh get in line it's IP time boys I I think it's very difficult for a lensee to tell a Lor to go f themselves and so typically I bet that there is some sort of reciprocation happening if not now at a later Point okay the way I understand the world of Marvel in particular is that everyone has their own launch window that they are slotted into so they don't want to like step on each other's toes during those windows so maybe another option is for them to cross promote across everything right so

they have this window someone else is going to have the next window and so maybe they're just allowing for these type of cross promotions in the meantime or during these big launches I don't know but yes the answer to your question is certainly Marvel can help coordinate between the different Publishers they're working with promotions like I think that's part of the licensor job you that team yeah it's called range planning yeah so so you know when you're at a license or you call that range planning which is okay how do I make sure that my different lenses release have a window of opportunity where they're not competing with other lenses in it you know particularly when you can do that so Chris I think you're right on that and you think about it from Marvel's perspective right they are [ __ ] destroying the movie IPS right now like left and [ __ ] right and Center you know like the only thing they got going on is this [ __ ] right that's actually improving the brand you know what I mean so maybe there's more focus on this stuff now because they can't get a movie out that's good to save their lives but

yeah yeah unless it's Agatha All Along on Disney plus which was awesome yeah doesn't count I know that doesn't count does not count yeah although they have a bunch coming soon with the the next phase right what's it secret Wars I forgot what the next phase is that they're yeah forget the hunter you're going to have to Buckle in this weekend for $15 million opening that thing looks like a disaster absolute disaster Spider-Man universe like spin-off character who I've never heard of and the movie not a spin-off remember the Sinister 6 longtime villain anyway the fact of the matter is the movie is tracking to like the lowest opening in the history of [ __ ] marble below Madam web and morbius Jesus Christ dude I tried to watch that hold on I had tried to watch The Madam Webb movie in Earnest dude that thing was [ __ ] terrible I dude there's not many movies can't get to the first 30 minutes you know it was horrible absolutely horrible anyway so I

don't know how you guys have time to watch movies when there are so many games to [Music] launch step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach and revenue exola provides robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition maned subscriptions and stream line Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customize secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global success this podcast is brought to you by apps Wier in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to to download is more than just insightful it's essential enter

apps lier the leader in Mobile attribution and marketing analytics that allows you to measure the full potential of your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps lier where your app's potential meets performance [Music] segue into Path of Exile 2 let's talk about Path of Exile 2 because really we buried the lead here Path of Exile 2 had a monster weekend even above Marvel Rivals which I really really appreciate yeah peaking at 580 CCU which is 30% higher than Marvel Rivals and this is for a paid access game you need to pay 30 bucks Us in order to join this early access I love this I talked about this before in terms of their strategy for

launch I think it's really really smart I love that it also beat a PVP service at launch with this strategy as well that it seems to be countering a narrative that I think we all have shared which is that PVP is more mass Market than PVE that looters are Niche or RPG games are Niche MMOs are only for the nerdiest of the nerd right Eric no uh uh I'm not not quite what I've been saying but go ahead finish your thing well I'm not saying that you're saying it I'm saying that in general when we talk about the industry Trends people tend to say PVP services will get a lot more players than deep RPG PVE Services right and also Path of Exile in general is just especially very niche of a niche and so that countered all this right like number one I love the strategy paid access nailing retention before going

free to play they're going to get a ton of content already in Early Access I've been playing there's so much stuff to do so many builds this is right now their golden cohort and on top of that they've really leaned into uh nailing core combat and Theory crafting which I think are are two big elements in lutter RPGs that have been missing including in games like Diablo and I'm playing right now and I'm finding it way more engaging than diao for especially on the court combat side which obviously is just the beginnings but I love where Diablo's gone pretty simple like I melt the entire screen of enemies and never have to think about any damage I'm just kind of waiting through a damage Lake versus this no I actually have to think I actually have to roll around I need to avoid attacks uh it's closer in my mind to like Hades or closer to more like a Souls s um because you actually have to think in the second second which just makes the game more in from my perspective can I ask uh before Phil

goes an ignorant question so you pay 30 bucks Us in Early Access when it launches it goes free to play how how does that work but it's in 9 to 12 months like this is not like a so so actually many free to-play games have done this where they say there's a starter pack where there's a Founders Edition which is the only way to access this game for a limited time window to pay and get access to the founder pack typically the founder pack also has a bunch of extra goodies for you joining in early but then that allows them to slow down the funnel to get that golden cord of players but also to figure out their retention and then they go free to play in the future so even multiverses did this at their first launch and R company did this whole bunch of games have done these found editions so Jen this is the exact conversation I've had with brand markers when I've tried to push this exact strategy onto basically every game I've worked on that is going

that will eventually end up as free to play I've tried to pitch them as starting as paid Early Access and Adam I think I think there's a really important point for for Gen 2 is like how do you Market this right you know is it is it a Founders pack I think that has a very different veneer to it than like it's paid Early Access it's basically just a paid skew a Founders pack carries different conations with it you can carry the P paid Founders pack over to the full release and just make it a you know you just don't get access anymore you just get all the goods that are associated with it you should be doing Mega premium Ultra founders packs for $100 that's an easy win I don't think that was the case with path path bags I'll correct me if I'm wrong Adam did they just have the $30 Ste they did I just bought it so I was just looking at it they did have premium ones beautiful beautiful love sorry sorry sorry I thought I I thought this was this game is totally for you Eric this game is for you you will love this let me just quickly give Phil a shout out here because I initially thought that this was just a free to you know like a Founders pack

type thing and in a few days like you could in a week or so I would have to pay I I I could play for free and so I held off on doing this and then I got totally sucked in because yeah it's $30 I found out it's like 12 months before the [ __ ] freeto playay think I'm like [ __ ] this I'm gonna buy this stuff and a minute I'm thinking oh my God Philip black is a [ __ ] genius right he's been talking about this for years right this is the strategy that he's put out there and so lot of games that are trying to do other things with these like free-to-play stuff it's just like have a $30 access point and then sell it at higher premiums for like getting more access and more cool [ __ ] dude and so that you can get as much money out of the early people as possible and then bring in the freeloaders later don't all go it at once right the time the freeloaders come on board 12 months later dude the game is going to be [ __ ] rock solid you know and the people that are willing to spend are going to be more forgiving in a lot of ways as well initially so yeah I no

and I I think the other thing this solves for is something Adam you've been mentioning which is like how how do you kind of like gate access because like once you're once you're out the door you're out the door and surprisingly like you can do region lock on Steam but no one chooses to do it it still is a big mystery I've like tried to sign up the devs to this and everyone's just like what is this and this is another way you can kind of gate access before releasing it to the masses you know without you know having a clubhouse type situation the brand marketers though always confuddled by this right and I actually I sympathize with you Jen it's like if you're a brand marketer like what is this is this launch you know it kind of sucks the air out of the room is is the real launch when it's out of Early Access because you can't you can't do your magical moments right your Confluence of events where you dump the budget so what do you do with your marketing budget if this is the strategy it just it it kills all the magic no it's hard right but number one is I I love this I think this is great I do think it makes you have to think about your go to market very differently

and we talk about this in Mobile freeto playay which is you know we talk about monopo all the time how they kind of soft launched and rolled out different countries and they they didn't do the shark fin pop and drop that happens in AAA even console marketing but they did that like let's you know slow and steady wins the race like the tortoise in the hair so I think that there's an element of that here where you have to be you have to identify your Bullseye audience okay who are the absolute nerds that absolutely want this game and you develop a marketing plan very specifically for them around the exclusive content and the benefit of you getting in right now and you make it about that and then once you open freeo playay later on then your messaging and your positioning changes to go a little bit broader and you likely you know a little bit more by then but you do have to in a sense bifurcate your spend you have to bifurcate your audience and your messaging and treat it very differently I would have to think a lot more about it but that's my like you know on the

spot take and plus Adam you talked the other day about like retention and how do we understand retention a little bit longer in a way that makes sense now this is the golden Cort they're going to be very magical and they're retention but it does give you some of those early indicators that you might need later on to understand like do we have something or not I don't know exactly and what I love too is that you get that second beat which after your retention you can be flexible with this path of exent system as well like you get a big flood of Revenue right now yeah to pay back a lot of that project to then fuel how what should the marketing be uh budget be for that second launch and what I also like is if developers look at that second beat of free to- playay and then they start to add new features at that time right like now it's not just a beat it's also a re-engagement beat for a golden Cort um because like Marvel Rivals creating that one moment we all friends come back and say everybody's got to go play this thing and trying to do that twice if you can create moments

for both segments of your players new players that are coming in just as free as well as your golden cohort your core uh you can create that moment um but I do think this is more challenging for PVP we are looking at it for the context of Path of Exile I think it's a lot easier to swallow because if matchmaking goes down here because say they didn't get 580k CCU they could still survive right that's still a viable model if let's say super viive went out with a $30 Founders pack skew right and now the CCU was not 30k it was 5K right that's a lot different situation they've now killed the game they've killed the launch and they've only made whatever many units on a pretty pitiful founder sko right yeah agree PVP kind of changes how you think about it because you need the numbers let's keep going cuz we got more Delta Delta Force it's out baby

we're cooking uh couple couple things I want to note about China always on my mind these days reporting from Daniel Amed of niik Partners who I think had some very interesting insights over Twitter we were discussing them on the Chinese side for Delta Force you won't see them in the steam numbers because they are Distributing with a direct download of the client and tensent of course has their own portal right now there's 40 million pre-registered players in China across PC and mobile although of course the the PC skew is already out so I think this is a an old number but still a real one they had 40 million registered users so there're still a lot of demand in China for this game so when we review it right now we're mostly going to be looking at Western numbers and the Western experience and the first thing you'll notice when you play this game is uh this is Hardcore Chinese copying this this brings me back this brings me back to early freeto play so if you're watching the YouTube version right now we're looking at a screenshot of Battlefield 2042 and a screenshot of Delta Force and of course this UI is is pretty standard across most games but we're talking down to the color scheme

uh things are similar and when you actually go and you play this game they literally one toone copied Battlefield it was shocking being in dice dice cooworker DMS is it's interesting group messaging right going on right now but this is like straight up straight up copying and I don't say that with any Venom uh that's just a strategy they chose to go with I'm sure it helped them release the game rather rapidly we take a look at PSU for the game we can compare kind of the total Battlefield numbers and again we're just looking at steam here so we're combining Battlefield 5 Battlefield 20 42 and Battlefield 1 which all by the way have substantial populations that continue to this day that's actually one of the interesting problems for both Call of Duty and for Battlefield is like hey there are all these players still playing all these old versions what do we do with them so if we merge those together we're looking at you know maybe around 30,000 CCU and when we look at Delta Force it clocked in around 100,000 this weekend and we do see a little bit of a decline in I wouldn't even say a little bit a pretty big decline in Battlefield players relative to Delta Force to

Adam's Point earlier in the podcast though it's still pretty early you know this is maybe just the dating phase but I do think there's a direct relationship between Delta Force and Battlefield and when you play Delta Force it's clear they're going for the battlefield jugular there's almost nothing new in this game there's literally nothing new in this game it is a one toone copy of Battlefield only worse in the sense that they don't have any of the destruc ability they don't have frostbite I don't want to say that with Venom because what they do have is they have way more content that is clear to me and they really have to bet on content winning the day and as we heard when we were on the podcast with the Timmy GM is that they're also betting on anti-che winning the day but I was pretty blown away at how one to one of a copy this game is from Battlefield I mean this is the thesis like let's go after Battlefield it has all the battlefields problems every single problem Battlefield has this game has in it Conquest is an absolute [ __ ] show there's a ton of inequality in kills when it comes to Conquest that was something that we're always dealing with at dice is that there's a very small portion of players who get so many of the kills you can't really do skill B skill-based matchmaking because the

servers are so large and PSU constraints H there's so many Battlefield problems we can go into Battlefield philosophy but it has all those problems and so for this thing to win it really has to win on the live service and anti-che because it ain't GNA win on anything else is it winning on anti Che just because like there is obviously that huge review bomb and I was thinking even like on Steam at least for Western audience is did that review score coming in pretty low because of the anti-che actually dropped their CCU potentially I mean okay well then you'd have cheaters bitching I mean go go to Battlefield review it's people always bitching about cheaters it was their number one NPS result every single like the the level of an cheat that they had within their game yep it's it's similar to Riot what they had in valerant it's it's aggressive it's Colonel level you know bu beware I'm just asking the question of like at least for Western AAS is did that actually hurt them at launch or do now think that that's going to help them retain in the long run I think will help

them retain when steam users get over themselves as they they always do all right next all right so pretty quickly here and kind of a big deal I didn't you know so I didn't really know this was coming so fortnite goes first person with Ballistic so fortnite is announced a first person tactical 5v5 shooter that is coming in early access on December 11th so by by the time you hear this it will be available so basically it sounds like ballerin or you know you know CS inside of fortnite likely a really strong overlap with BR you know player Behavior with T shooter I don't know sounds like a great idea product ey what do you think so I like this play right like in general what I'm finding with like shooter audiences is things are not clean so people assume that there's these like specific silos of like Tac shooter players Cod shooter players Battle Royale players

Battlefield players fortnite players they all like live in these little silos but then when you look at the real data about the amount of overlap that exists between these things it's a lot messier than I think a lot of people assume in general also TX Shooters tend to be younger and higher twitch players I like this play by epic to avoid these players sort of Aging out of their platform and going to another destination stop players bleeding to valerant and to Counter-Strike keep them within the ecosystem the best that they can and keeping their lockers filled with 49 Cosmetics keeping them retained awesome and it's funny too because at least like this was their strategy when fortnite started they wanted to capture aging out Minecraft players so now that they are the Minecraft they're just trying to seek and prevent CH would I have picked a different shooter like I think if they probably have higher overlap with like Call of Duty than they do with uh tax Shooters but actually I don't I haven't seen the data so I don't maybe they saw it in the r data but I do expect that epic would actually have a few more

games like this in the hopper so they can start to respond if they see any sub genres explode which to me actually points more towards how difficult the shooter space is we talk about black hole some engagement right like if they're able to basically build any Moog that a competitor has very very quickly within their ecosystem they're able to build a pretty thick mode to keep those players in go do you think they're using valerant data to make this conclusion because valerant on EGS maybe but like the thing is too like I don't know how many players actually use the EGS launchers for valer like sorry EGS launcher like the EGS launchers like nothing there's all on EGS why would they do that okay all right it's I guess it's only fortnite players that are like no I'd rather not download The Right launcher and use this for my valant launcher h all right let's get into uh some mobile Infinity Nikki like the game

you never thought would be is that's true is crossplatform but this is one of those really really interesting some people call this cozy and I'm like that this is not a cozy game everyone but go forward Phil first thing I think we should note is this is not on Steam when it comes to PC this is actually on EGS speaking of the the platform no one uses I wonder how much they they paid out for EGS uh I think that was a strategic bad move I think they should have been on Steam yeah I mean I would agree with you on that only reason to go to EGS is because you want to have a steam launch later that's it or well they could have gotten paid right all right cool uh infinity Nikki is out and if you aren't familiar with the Nikki franchise this is an absolutely insane crazy cocaine Asian pivot for a game that was mostly 2D freeo playay still made a ton of money on mobile it was a dress up game it's kind of almost like an Asian interpretation of design home

where you would have this main character you're collecting outfits and ultimately you're going into competitions where you're getting score and some of the score is derived from your peers voting on which outfit is the best relative to two of them and then you'll also get score though for hitting certain objectives like satisfying a style requirement which is kind of how they drive the meta and so they've decided to throw that all to the wind instead make a really high quality ue5 game and they ended up hiring the lead designer from Zelda breath of the wild which is Kento tominaga we'll see if we get that one right I am only two hours into this game I played a lot of the original love Nikki which I thought was just an absolute blasting creativity of how you build a whole whole game around around styling this one still takes the idea of these costumes unlocking certain things or or advancing you so each costume will give you particular abilities in different part parts of the game so one for instance might give you the ability to jump another one may help you uh pet

dogs and so it's a super high quality 3D game it's a huge pivot it's a company that's in China they have a Japanese Branch now it turns out they also have a Los Angeles Branch as well which I'm curious to learn more about in terms of early success and again just looking at mobile because we don't have EGS numbers we look at the download rankings in China which I still think is the key demographic for this game on December 3rd when it launch launched it was number one in the games category and it's slipped a little bit in the past week but it's still pretty strong in terms of downloads as we heard it hit 10 million players across all platforms over the week so I don't know what else to say like it looks great it's a really Innovative game I'm really happy to see the female audience also get directly marketed to if you go on YouTube and and get and watch videos of influencers it's all young teenage girls who are super into this game and are really excited about it I think it's a demographic that deserves more love and attention because we know spend and this is a game that appeals to them and it also doesn't have combat you know you don't you don't k

out and kill anything you like almost revive monsters or you kind of stun them with your abilities there's no murder it's a joyful world to be a part of the plot is actually kind of heavy but by and large it's just awesome it's just I don't want to call it cozy but it feels good feels good to be a part of this world I love it I'm only two hours in but I'm looking to get I'm become a big spender I think you and I have actually played almost as much of this game I played it this morning for an hour or so and got to the main the new town or whatever yes I have kind of a different take on this game I'll be honest and I don't want to upset our anime friends out there but this game is a little freaky dude it's freaky as [ __ ] actually it's like you are literally dressing up a 13-year-old girl character like that's the game basically the whole meta is getting outfits for these characters right and as an adult male I don't maybe it's me maybe it's just me right it just doesn't feel appropriate for me to be

engaging in such Behavior but yeah I don't know dude this definitely a game for Ethan Levy though like Ean love this [ __ ] dude he's all over this one right two mentions for Ethan but it is a cozy game right yeah no killing it is absolutely beautiful like they the I think and I mean the world is beautiful just to be clear so I don't want to be all creeped out and perhaps you're not the audience and that's okay yeah maybe that's it maybe that's it put this in my bucket of like I'm only going to watch YouTube clips of this one this is just not one that I'm gonna play yeah right like too many other games it felt little dirty and I think I'm going to uninstall you ever played Bayonetta back in the day oh yeah yeah yeah yeah back that that was another one I was like I can't play this this is I can't do this yeah a certain demographic that luckily is not you thank you okay Ethan certain demographic and Ethan okay well folks like anime you know and

there's a reason why some folks like anime but listen I think the idea of a game that has broader appeal than just core mechanics and you know Phil to your point is appealing to young women who that is aspirational and that is a play pattern that is interesting I applaud companies doing those types of things right like we need more different things with monetization just to be clear like they're $50 outfits in this game like this is where I draw the line between This and like Star Stables which is a company in Sweden they make horse games which are like MMO based they don't know how to monetize for [ __ ] they're so afraid oh my God we have young girls love Nikki nope $50 costumes let's go baby oh my God it is no dude that the shit's no joke dude monetization wise that's the first thing I looked at I was like holy crap oh it's ins it's insane yeah star system oh we got the whole whole the whole system arrives it is this is disgusting let's move on is predatory is they're praying on those peeds let watch never enter my H is it but is it like uh the hoyo verse is it like the ginin the

honai of the world with the that same kind of like level up boxes there's PS yeah there's I think could be even more extreme crafting yeah I would agree you should go dunk on Str NOA leave Infinity Nikki alone like Infinity Nikki is not for like the adult males in the room that's Str NOA I think Infinity Nikki really appeals to kind of like the teenage girl segment okay yeah for this I think this is the wrong one to shoot your uh your arrows at this one's rova is is a hero shooter like going after the OverWatch category right it's going after otakus for sure yeah all right okay all right everybody we have done a lot and there's more to do so we'll pick it up pick it up next week see you then you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice those stars and likes while a small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack

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