TWIG #313 Netflix Games Gets Jacked while the Game Awards Jacks Up Numbers

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to the deconstructor of fun this week in games podcast number 313 where we give you all of our game industry Insider takes on the top game news stories each week hi I am Jen donaho I fill the marketing and Publishing role on the action RPG that we call Twig today we have Phil black game Economist Mary MTS and happy IEP to all oh my God Eric Crest the master of strategy and investing M catov the founder Whisperer I have it here and it also says just somebody put this here x product and I got trigger I I I I got I got triggered by this so much that in this episode I am GNA talk about games and product a lot so be prepared so fantastic and by the way I only wrote down what you said

two weeks ago my mind is kind of forgets everything that happens two a week ago it just starts like a goldfish every time so I love that you just compared yourself to a goldfish who once we get into Nordic talk is probably trapped in ice somewhere considering this time of year all right here's what we have on the episode today later on at the end we'll talk about the game awards which Mishka wrote is Jeff Keeley the Jeff Keeley Awards um it's pretty funny Squad Busters releases a massive new update will it turn the decline we're going to get into some of the new product features that they have Netflix games get got GTA oh my God I can't wait to talk about this one oh my God and then licensing Strikes Back is what I'd like to call that and then a16z games offers big ideas for Crest to chew on or choke on if we get to that at the very very very end Mishka I'm just cracking y today like what's going on you're like my personal laugh track I don't know I just came from the gym I feel good this

is like a last working day so um I'm I'm feeling good it's a it's a fun day well let me start with some fun and thanks to the supercell LinkedIn team they are cracking me up so first in our slack Channel please apply to join it's a lot of fun people are posting not only funny [ __ ] like this but also really helpful and useful information so somebody put in this post from the supercell team and it was them going in and basically saying saying hey everybody we're really close to beating King's LinkedIn follower account and yes we're absolutely going to make it about Finland versus Sweden Swip for our totally reasonable and not at all desperate strategy number one is I was like this is really funny good job and then they followed it up with the Finnish winter filter which basically just shows everything just going to Black and then they posted another post it's like look it's Finland at 2 o'clock in the afternoon 3 o'clock 4 it was just

a black image just like chef's kiss LinkedIn supercell team well done so Mishka I wanted to ask you like what's up with your finished friends picking a fight on LinkedIn is this a thing I guess you're just always fighting with the sweds I don't know I don't get it explain it to me like you could take it in a way that You' start explaining history and doing all this this this this you know a deep dive so instead I would like to explain everything through the images of Daniel Craig so this is like the key Nordic countries there's four of them there's the rich Norway the sophisticated and Wealthy Sweden there's always hot and sexy Denmark and then there's Finland like this is this is also by the way how our economies look like like Phil can attest to this and then people kind of ask like what's what's Iceland look like and it's it's a little bit of a different image like sort of a grungy looking Daniel Craig I was posting these images like like everybody was who's nordics were

like these are incredibly accurate and then I got challenged they were like show us Russian Daniel Craig so and so we found one as well and the the next one is this so here you got it like every nationality basically represented by Daniel Craig actor and that sort of the first image kind of tells you why why fins are so eager to compete with with anybody isn't this like David fighting David or The Clash of the Titans in miniature like who giv who gives a [ __ ] small countries yeah the these are smaller than a than a typical state so we're talking about countries that have less than than 10 million in population like norways he he said wearing his H&M sweatshirt listening to his Spotify ABA golden album vyl behind him the the best thing is you got to find a British actor to represent this analogy here well done well well done Daniel so so that's it so that's Daniel Craig explaining why fins are are challenging

the sweds inferiority complex that's that's the reason so anyway let's move on all right go ahead let's start chilling uh Shilling a couple of things so on the podcast side I had a podcast called from segmentation to personalization with side Place Cameron Stewart so I wanted to have on a podcast somebody who is really really good with live Ops and the first thing that comes to my mind is Social Casino company not really relying on new downloads but really having that long retention and understanding how they run their teams both from the organization side what kind of tools they use Etc so really a deep dive on how C playay which is one of the the best Social Casino companies in the world really how they run their operations so if you're interested in liveops this is an interesting podcast and then on the event side we got the Supper Club on Sunday so we got the other first signups if you're coming to London check it out put your name in we're approving the first batch I believe tomorrow so make sure that you sign up and and get the invite and see you there and then there will be a link

to the mixer that will happening on Monday so both events will be at Sol house should be a fun times awesome well I just recorded another live Ops podcast with folks from plka wuga and game Refinery nice so that'll be out in the New Year we cover a little bit more of like what are the trends that we're seeing in terms of live Ops in general and you know how are social features going how are engagement features and monetization features so I'm excited and I think the plka folks Mike are with you of who is better in Social Casino anyway just say it yeah they're great they're great we've Jen and I we we've changed roles like I've been recording all the marketing podcasts and you're doing product podcast so it's been it's been fun we should continue this I ask all the stupid questions I like it because I learn and then I like hearing you ask stupid questions in the marketing ones it's pretty fun no no you do great no you're doing a really great job thank you for picking those up because many of those are European focused all right so my quick thank you is to Planet play for another great game industry happy hour

that was in Los Angeles we did a watch party for the game rewards because I didn't want to sit in a chair for four hours and lots and lots of fans of the podcast came thanks to all of them I think you know Crest they still love you they still love you I just I don't know dude I don't know I'm trying to be as mean as possible so no one no one wants to listen to me anymore no they did say keep up the fighting you know again like it's pretty funny when I ask people for feedback back the number one thing they say well first they say is they love the content and our takes but they do say they love when we fight so let's fight more yeah not you and I just us in Us in general so let's move on Corrections Phil wants to glorify asking for lots of money in Path of Exile is that what's going on so this was from two different people that reported in one was on the slack Josh kenck that Path of Exile when we're talking about it having different SKS being able to monetize on those founders backs up front I wasn't quite sure

whether or not they had any and Adam stepped in and said oh yeah they do have up to $100 SKS it turns out they actually have up to $500 SKS they're available on the website they send you a t-shirt at that stage you actually get some physical merch but wow the kiwis are are up to good business and I love it so $500 skew like new year goal start with that how can we get your game to a $500 skew is this a 10cent company yes they owned by 10cent holy yeah yes oh interesting I have one correction and I it was regarding Roblox and uefm and basically the expert in the space basically suggested that there has been absolutely no profitable entity that has built games for Roblox and ufn without significant amounts of external investment what about adop me the studio who makes it they've scaled they're doing 80 million a year that was the claim the fact that like it's a very very challenging model across both

platforms and to articulate in any other way is disingenuous not sure about that yeah me me too like like there's a lot of kids who who built like their companies and sold the as an asset to to one of these aggregators that have raised money like Vex and game fam and so forth but you have to ask yourself are the games themselves profitable or are the companies themselves profitable are they just aggregating for users and scale so anyway the person I know is an expert and I trust him and I know he did a lot of work on this space so okay but if if there's any examples that don't fit that yeah let us know we need Lo and phs's kids back on the podcast I mean they know it's popular they don't know what's profitable right yeah I'm sure their dad can teach that like guess so maybe we do more deep Dives on that I think that it's just like any platform when you're in the top you're printing cash but for the majority of folks it's not the case it's not like

roblock is profitable either so that is true but Q3 was the first time they they finally lost less money and so yay well I mean they're getting rewarded for it their stock is up have you SE it's hit at least a 52 week high if not the biggest high since they kind of went public or they had a big high in 2021 November 21 I would hold on to that excitement on the stock just saying see after this quarter this is the quarter that they really spend a lot and they could really you know kill the year so to speak so yeah it'll be interesting but I think they also had to clamp down on this predatory peed thing that you know is is all over their site so yeah they put out a ton of trust and safety feature announcements yeah which may impact monetization from that audience yeah no from met onus well they they also they're marketing the 25% off robu right now like I was checking

out their ads in Center Tower and they're they're doing UA for go out and get a discount on Roo because I don't think I've ever seen that from a a gaming company before like that in Mobile UA I mean you obviously see it on Console all the time yeah with you know AAA games discounting but not for mobile UA on a gift card fascinating [Music] okay kickass liveops 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 capture 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 live [Music] Ops let's get into ironically epic so epic signs a new deal with telefonica to pre-install the epic game store on new Android devices for easier access to fortnite so this goes live in Spain Germany the UK and Spanish speaking Latin American countries this is interesting because it kind of goes around the Google Play Store and I think many of you know there's a lot of lawsuits going on can preloads make a comeback I remember back in the day this was a a huge huge money-making idea for us when we were at EA Crest and getting preloads on and and everyone kind of stopped because the app stores became dominant so dude this is like 300 million people use telefonica I didn't know is that big holy crap that's why I'm like it's a big deal I mean I think you know it's not in the US so people often ignore that but this is a this is

a pretty pretty big deal God damn it I hate to be always negative Nelly on this stupid thing but like at the end of the day how many devices does Samsung sell in a year right they've had their goddamn [ __ ] store on the Samsung devices for decade dude they haven't done [ __ ] all right so I just just be clear right like this is not like the rest PE for Success necessarily what's different in this case is that you remember when we talked about the friction there's like 19 steps to install the epic game store and Android yeah so now if if it's just there if it's just preloaded and you remove that friction and and when you get that service perhaps that reduces a lot of the I don't think this is the be allend all solution but if they start to have success with this and God only knows how much they're paying to get pre-loaded on there because typically remember back in the day we had to pay for this because it's like UA do you the cpis are I I

have no idea what the deal was for that's only the store and then you open up there's three games in that store what do you think they're paying for it the for something like this you a ball per it oh probably pay out of their ass 100 100 million easy five five bucks five bucks an install that's actually pretty good deal that's a pretty good deal I bet it's a dollar like something like that a dollar yeah like a more discounted and then maybe they get some backend royalty on any like small amount of money on any sales on it I don't know something like Tonica is real the real winner here I mean if you're telling me they can sell an app space for 500 million are you kidding me the most valuable real estate in the world essentially like a widget like there's three games in the Epic store like literally three games it's still a service that needs to retain you know it needs to inspire and retain and just getting this on the screen doesn't do that much yeah I have it on my screen never open I opened once I saw three games I'm my cool you're not like a 12-year-old kid playing fortnite my friend I sometimes I feel like it to be [ __ ] clear Samsung sells 200 million

devices a year for the last decade or more and they have gotten [ __ ] all in terms of market share on stores just just to be clear and they have it button center with like as much promotional [ __ ] as they want to do on their own phone right it's automatically installed like is an uphill battle all right I agree I agree totally it's an uphill battle it's an interesting move we should keep an eye on that's all I'm saying cuz that's let's stay positive things can change [ __ ] that [ __ ] that dude this is this is 2024 no positive maybe 2025 we get more positive right 2024 negative I'm gonna say it could work it could work let's go Chris got Cole in his Shalom stocking you know that I that I'm gonna give him for Hanukkah Christmas so I have one piece of news so app Loven is changing the aspect ratio for its video ads landscape won't be supported anymore this was interesting so I called up John who's in

my time zone John Wright his theory is that the most games in landscape are midcore midor is predominantly in a purchase focus when advertisers upload landscape it messes with algorithm giving it another thing to think about removing that will help axon work better and axon is AI matching system and also the reason why e-commerce is taken off for app so this was his take not my take huh next next all right a [ __ ] really at the end of the year actually I mean it's a pretty it's a big deal when you're thinking about all of the crazy ads that you have to bill and if your game is landscape you're kind of [ __ ] um all right fine Jesus All Star is turning six and they're doing a collaboration with Toy Story from December 12th to February 5th Buzz Light you're is going to be the first ever playable character inside of raw star that is not from their universe as the former franchise manager for Toy Story at Disney I can say that Toy Story is getting the better end of this deal

Toy Story is a preschool brand that appeals to no kid over the age of three unless you are nostalgic and you grew up with that brand so this brand is struggling to stay relevant so congrats to Disney who just revived your brand and made some money well done because you got not only your brand in front of 12-y olds who might think you're cool you're also getting a licensing deal so good job all right let's go to investments in m&a and oh Netflix here we go chis I am embarrassed that I didn't know this ahead of time since I'm was so in the no about this particular thing but it says Netflix is removing GTA 3 and Vice City from its gaming library after one year and that's [ __ ] crazy okay because I knew that they spent around $50 million on these license but I assumed I assumed that it was part of the service like it wasn't like G to expire in one year like that is crazy that's crazy this has got to be the dumbest $50 million

spent ever right from an investment perspective right all they did was push the vanity metrics of downloads right which they are still quoting in their PR today so in that sense maybe they got some use out of this [ __ ] right but a oneyear commitment for $50 million are they out of their goddamn Minds right it's just I I I just it doesn't make any sense to me like this is not what is going to drive engagement for interactive on their platforms is some chachki [ __ ] download like let's get some [ __ ] products already right that oh my god do you think that they got out of the deal like what if okay I'm spitballing I don't know anything but what if they were like hey this actually didn't do what we wanted it to do and what if Netflix like tried to exit the deal early and save some of the 50 million that they were spending because it it was actually wasn't helping them what could have been the better upside than what they had which is that they quoting it in press releases what would

have been a better upside like I guess the Assumption here is that when you put this on the platform people are going to be driven to the platform but you still have to download separate apps right like the Netflix app is a controller it's it's a central controller you still have to go to the individual apps so it's hard to like the whole epic game strategy with free games was to give away live service games because every time you booted a live service game you need to boot epic game store and I don't think you can run that Playbook here really effectively like you can push new apps but you can be playing GTA and push me I guess back to the central app and that I mean that's that's a tough place to be but I have a hard time imagining they had a higher ceiling for it than what they already got how long are we going to continue the story of like they're smart people they're very data driven they're testing and seeing what has traction dude I worked at Amazon games man no but but but like the answer is a long time yeah clearly even like like man like they've spent according to to according to like the sources that are very reliable they've spent well over $3 billion on Netflix games change

we we looked at the cont remember we on a quarterly basis we looked at content as what 12 billion a year I understand but you have to have something to show off like this week I'll say this weekend I played Netflix games I download civilization 6 and it only showed me that hey ux on a game that is designed for PC is not that good when you're playing it on a tablet and I played it for a couple hours I'm like okay cool [ __ ] this and uninstalled it and I know how much they play for paid for civilization probably 7 to1 million to put it in no ads and like here's an old civilization since all of you want to play the newest one Eric what's your prediction for Netflix games 2026 let's hop over that one year the grace period for the new executive 2026 oh 2026 okay yeah my hope yeah I get it I get it my hope is they start to swim in their own lane right they start releasing new content that fits their [ __ ] platform right stop messing with this mobile [ __ ]

stop the AAA development right create some new sh interactive [ __ ] story experiences you know that blows our Collective Minds that is what I hope and that's what I've always hoped from the very beginning was like this is what I wish were doing right it's like experiment iterate the the problem is that they haven't even started iterating yet right they they haven't even thrown something to see out there what sticks at all the all this is chachki [ __ ] right that that doesn't make any sense the Triple A game obviously has been cancelled so they're at least they're look going right that way but like that's what I want to see I want to see them try new stuff right all right I got one hint of what they're trying okay so there was a New York Times article that came out on December 10th which actually ironically kind of coincided and happened to mention that they still had one GTA left but the the thing about the headline was are like Netflix's surprising selection of free video games and so without reading like the subheader I was like wait they have a

free game outside of the network and then the the headline was still like oh you know it's still there now however the new squid games game it's called squid games Unleashed is released and you do not need a Netflix subscription for a limited time it very clearly says in the app Notes and there's IAP and it's a 32 person multiplayer game so it's kind of like fall guys or stumble guys so again like I don't know if this is the right thing or not but you know if you want to talk about something different in a different strategy we haven't seen them do something outside the network we haven't seen them have IAP and I don't know how much we've seen multiplayer inside of these games I know Monument value 3 is out and actually that's kind that feels like you know like quintessential single player so they still have like that strategy but I don't know thoughts different that's

cool mind that's cool oh but but oh the butt it's cres you can download it directly from the App Store yeah yeah yes yeah that's what I'm saying is it's free on the App Store well what the [ __ ] they're trying to bring value to their IP though Eric this is what it's about it's about enhancing the value of their existing Brands and maybe they want some of the games to make money their IP Vehicles where's my Emily and Paris [ __ ] dress up game you better give this to me stop with a story [ __ ] give me idity Emily like Bridgerton can you imagine you could do with the Bridgton bridon Match 3 where are the obvious plays that we've been yelling about on this podcast the circle is the next revolution of social media you know free-to-play game that could exist nothing so if this is the strategy though this is a real shift in strategy that like games are basically just an IP a vehicle to a supporter IP I don't know that that makes more sense to me okay it's a marketing it's a marketing line item it's frch pnl I'm in j math now you

know that's not sexy that's not the point the point is to build retention and and conversion for new audiences and like build their subscription business right like you're not trying to with Chi games your your franchises doesn't make sense yeah I would think of it as extension and creating better value for the great IP Universe then I don't think the marketing play is the right play although I would I will say I think a little bit of what they did with Squid games here was a marketing play of like look you know to promote the new season I haven't watched it yet although squid games one was pretty good is to say now there's a mobile game that everyone can I would I would have actually thought they would have said no the the right idea is to say you can only get that squid games game if you subscribe to the platform and come and see all of this ex it felt like the like a very weird strategy to be like no one and for all wait let's like put a pin in this

but like I think what to Misha's point like I think it's 2026 that we actually see the new strategy kind of play out like all this stuff is remnants of the Old Guard so yeah once we start to see like some evidence that there's a new Direction maybe we'll see some interesting activity but for now the squid game thing is actually kind of interesting but it's not making any money by the way but it's just not even out yet just it just yeah like let's but let's check in on it yeah we'll check in on it we'll check in on it but I think it's it's a cool idea if it was part of the subscription that would even make more sense to me but whatever I give my quick prediction on Netflix in 2026 I think they're GNA Circle back and just end up with licensing so only Third Party Production they're going to do only license game with their IPs just like everybody else cut cut all that they G and and at the end of everything they have spent $5 billion and somebody will ask why don't we just buy scopely rather than just starting to do this

that will be the end of it and there will be a licensing shop unfortunately because they're kind of going in all the directions now right now anyways talking about going into all the directions and and spending a little bit of a money doing it UK based game developer built a rocket boy has acquired us-based PC and console games publisher and developer play Fusion for an undisclosed sum now if you don't know Bill the rocket boy has raised over $110 million over four or five funding rounds I think the last round was round D which is very rare in the gaming business like scopy I think race F round was the last one on paper this company was founded by Rockstar ogs like the Rockstar Founders Leslie meny so forth they founded this company eight years ago and they have never shipped a game uh they've raised $100 million over $100 million from investors I'm sure the founders who were you know very talented game makers have made an exit through their secondaries

and this is a company that is essentially owned by Venture capitalists and private equity and as a Founder Whisperer I salute this it's not stupid to ask it's stupid to give so in the upcoming twick Awards I'm definitely putting this company into the limping donkey category it's uh interesting what happens from this so any any takes on uh Bill the rocket boy who funded these guys uh I think red bird was in the uh the latest round so we're talking about big investors already oh Net's oh Galaxy that's why that makes sense no Galaxy's a small money compared to like red bird I think redb bird was the last one right I'm clearly in the wrong part of the game industry so we we're already grabbing from private Equity I salute this like don't don't take this in the wrong way I think this is this is the correct way to take the private Equity money on behalf of the people putting money in their pocketbook not on behalf of VCS or players yes so this is I'm uding the founders of bamboozling the

VCS and then the private Equity yeah how about all the victims in this thing like all the Pension funds and all the Grandma's money that's in these VCS right you know only a tiny percentage of Pension funds goes into the VCS and it's a risk category it's maximum 5% of the endowments okay I'm with these poor private schools like Harvard and their big endowments right again a tiny portion anyways so talking about funds UAE so United Arab Emirates based beam Foundation has announced plans to launch beam Ventures 150 million Abu Dhabi based fund targeting gaming sector so this is another thing I still I was just recently in Abu Dhabi and I actually will be in UA tomorrow we got three episodes coming in from the Abu Dhabi event with Google and I salute this again they're investing into the gaming sector they're growing who who are these guys do you know them I don't know beam but I when I was in Abu Dhabi I visited the Loc gaming Hub it looked really cool like

every everything was razor everything was like new building it was like a media hub so there was a comic company there was like a CNN thing there was like all the like media was around this new awesome building so right next to the Yas Arena I mean I salute this m Misha I am going to reach around your throat and choke you what the fu who gives a [ __ ] about Razer and all this other [ __ ] like are these guys what they do right are they are they actually people that know games I don't know about be I'm just describing you the facilities that I went to they built like it's called Creator Hub I do I do money Mish this is like like the vaporware of of venture capital right like if if it's if it's just a mirage of opulence has nothing to do with like whether they'll be successful at Adventure investing meanwhile it's not a mirage let's put it this way it's very real there is opulence no no it's not no

that's exactly right it's not real right it's just a bunch of guys with a lot of money that are going to throw money at at whatever six they don't know what they're doing right oh so again I don't know beam Foundation at all yeah I what would be insightful is to know who these guys are at beam that are actually going to make investments to see if they have like the chops to do so right like the a16z guys like for a while it was like a football player and a [ __ ] tax accountant from Ur young right like no they they they do not the qualifications to make good investments in games right like that that you know that that's important right so this is what I want to know right however the a16z folks have have upgraded and have many industry I like those yeah Josh and whatever his name yeah those guys are good now they they have some some depth in the bench now right Doug Doug McCracken's doing marketing like really smart guy working cell yeah yeah what was it the game fund just announced a $150 million round right there's quite a few that came out this week of like funds in this range oh my God I got to

look it up now I forgot the name of them but anyway that is a [ __ ] legit like those guys are OG right they know what they're doing V games games those guys that's where you should be going right all you guys looking for funding go call those guys like they're they're going to give you the right type of advice I don't know about beam I don't know about 16z or light speed or any of these other guys go to these OG play B games like those guys know what they're doing you know Laten right on you put bigcraft in that crew I think they feel it I feel like they know what they're doing no too much crypto yeah too much crypto too crypto it rots it rots the brain we're GNA we're gonna have Mo on I want I really want him to explain himself at this point but like this is gonna be really funny well actually you're probably not going to do it but I'm I want to do it yeah well it's a funny time to talk you know web 3 gaming and crypto with Bitcoin hitting 108 or like the bit the Bitcoin e price doesn't have

anything to do with gaming really it just no it doesn't it does not none of these games have had any traction other than the fact that there some of the coins are going up but that doesn't mean [ __ ] oh no I agree from a standpoint of like is the game any good or not but yeah they're all like like everything is awesome Jen I can tell you like I was talking to plays play also has a crypto fund Kendrick is running it and talking I'm like you must be [ __ ] happy I was like if you he's a he lives in Singapore he's not American I was like if you could have voted for Trump you would have probably voted like 200 times it's like now everything is good crypto is up and so that helped significantly because a lot of these funds also hold a lot of tokens and when tokens go up now the fund is great but imagine running a crypto fund for the last couple of years before Trump came back like dude you're looking at bad numbers now now everything is Peachy everything I disagree with that 100% like you're still looking at bad numbers if your companies are not succeeding right

regardless of whether or not your coins are doing well like if you have your personal Investments sure but like but the funds held a lot of their Assets in tokens fine fine yeah so so so there's yeah it's fake you know it's vapor you know to cr's earlier point is it doesn't change the fundamentals of the business yeah however everyone is just caught up I think in the hype right now of growing crypto coins and people need to still think about is this a game that people want to play yes yeah yeah I I let's move on let's move on to real games and I want to hear about the update on the races so we have an update from our three little tadpoles let's see how they're swimming along we have Path of Exile 2 we have Marvel Rivals and we have Delta Force if you remember Infinity Nikki is not here because they chose to launch on EGS so we don't have public data available for them but EGS I'd really appreciate you guys doing something like this I'm not quite sure

what's holding you back we won't report on you until you do but here here's a shocker to end the year you know we're you know betting on which one might succeed between the three of them but a week later it looks like all of them are doing pretty well W in terms of PSU they have declined so you have P of Exile 2 which peaked at around 570,000 active users it's 24-hour Peak is 400,000 so yes they have lost about 178,000 over a week but again we're just looking at a peak there Marvel Rivals has fared a lot better they had a all-time peak of 480k PSU and their 24-hour Peak is 400k PSU so they only lost 80k Peak PSU and Delta Force has been Steady Eddy they're at about 990,000 PSU and they were at 120 at their Max but it has been incredibly steady for Delta Force more so than it looks like the other two games so who knows maybe the story line here is that there aren't winners and losers maybe they're just winners uh I mean path 2 is already going to walk away a winner with you know $500 SKS and

$30 SKS to to go on top of this but you know maybe that's the outcome that's such a good graph to look at finally where are they in the rankings versus like the top 10 Delta Force has slipped outside the top 10 I think it hangs around the top 20 path of EXA Marvel Rivals are usually top 10 top five top top around there you got to think the Delta Force is a bit of a disappointment though yeah that low level I think that's true but what I'd go back to is the 40 million pre-registration number in China cross mobile and in China so I think if this is just the West if this maintains it's going to be a small Western share but it's still a nice little cherry on top yeah Phil what I learned from your podcast which was really great again I didn't get a chance to tell you in person I really enjoyed the conversation with the GM of the studio and what he said was that they had launched in China on PC earlier in the year and and so they had already been getting a lot of data and metrics

and so you're right I think this is like not as core to their overall business it's a cherry on top because they already have hopefully I I mean I don't know if we know anything different a successful run in China I don't it's tough because it's not on Steam in China either the Chinese version of steam or the global one they use direct distribution or they use 10 cents I forget the name of the platform wi game or something but as one faithful LinkedIn commenter said it's like having a nice on a toilet or something that was one Chinese comment that's what I was saying about it I'll try to find the the proverb oh please we need to bring in more Chinese sayings then step into the future of game monetization with exola the premier partner for game developers seeking to expand their reach in Revenue exola provides a robust Suite of tools designed to enhance user acquisition manded subscriptions and streamlined Payment Solutions world wide unlock new markets and maximize

profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola powering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your apps Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's a essential enter apps flyer 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 sler where your app's potential meets [Music] performance so I think the other thing as we start to close the year is to reflect on what the winners are and I

think one of them has really been Pokemon TCG pocket although there's been some interesting activity lately you know we keep going back to the shark fin or stabilize for Pokemon TCG pocket and so far the story has been largely stabilization but there have been a couple chinks in the armor so like one of them is that we have seen a little bit of a drop in Revenue over the last couple year or last couple days so they were hitting these peaks of steadily around 5 million and that started to drop around 3 million even been hitting 2.5 now again that's still a monster success you're talking about over a $500 million run rate next year even if it were to continue its lowest point the problem here is like is it able to continue a trend and this recent uptick we just saw on December 16th is the launch of one of their first events with this sort of scale and so it's peaking with the new event at around where it used to Peak at around five million so I do think there are some Trends here that are a little bit concerning if we look at downloads right now they have been at a very small linear decline line it's not falling off a cliff but you can see

the trend line and the slope is negative and they haven't quite stabilized yet and so that is something that is going to continue to be an issue if they're not having a replacement rate of one then they're going to be shrinking and if they're going to be shrinking then Revenue will eventually fall in the long run the other thing that was interesting is the country Dynamic that we started to talk about so the United States and Japan compose such a large part of the revenue for Pokemon go I think the exact number is around 85 to 90% that if either of these countries downloads have a hiccup then then the game catches a cult and what we're seeing is that the United States downloads are declining at a faster rate than the Japanese downloads which is okay because the Japanese produce so much money per user in this game but the audience is increasingly becoming Japanese which I think is another observation here so about 40% of Dau is Japanese according to sensor Tower estimates and that's up from their launch at about 20% so also be curious to see Pokemon TCG pocket bet on a shrinking country but at least the Japanese share is increasing there's one last thing I want to point out that I think has gone a little bit unreported

which is that Pokemon go is kind of in the [ __ ] TCG hocky came out I really think that they're competing for similar UA profiles or similar traffic here so the we're looking at the week of October 28th when Pokemon TCG pocket launched and there was a decline in Pokemon go downloads before then so we could be just seeing a long run Trend although it seems like the rate of decline increases after Pokemon TCG pocket so it Peaks at around 800,000 and right now it's about 400,000 downloads since Pokemon TCG pocket is out yeah welcome to slicing yeah right like you know any anytime I work on an IP this is the number one thing we complain about is how do you make sure that you have a unique and differentiated view of that IP versus somebody else because consumer confusion is the thing like how does General player know what go is versus TCG pocket so and there can be sometimes there can be only one like it's not like you're going to play five Marvel games you're going to play one or two and for Pokemon you know looks like they're they're getting a little bit hit by that so if

if you're a marketer on either one of these you really got to look for the differentiation you gota like really slap your logo on all of your UA and really go after TCG like if I were them or if I were go I would really be leaning into my specific branding because it's not just about Pokemon anymore now you got to actually compete two points one is that latest data like the last three or four days they've released new content I think and the the revenue numbers are at alltime Highs at this point so it's about the content Cadence and putting out new characters and spending I'm going to push back on your idea about the downloads thing and how you're competing I think you're competing for Spenders you're not necessarily competing for these incremental downloads really right so the Spenders from Pokemon go are likely coming to TCG and playing that game and spending there versus spending on Pokémon go like it's a very very small audience of Spenders As We Know in both North America maybe it's a little bit bigger in Japan on on a

relative basis but so I think that's what they're doing is they're competing against suspenders and that's part of the reason why genin and myoho has been cannibalizing itself to death is because they're basically catering to the same audience of people that are willing to spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on this nonsense right that's fair Crest no you're I mean listen at the end of the day you're right and I'm thinking you know when I meant downloads I meant top of funnel you're out there with your you know your fishing rod or your sniper rifle looking for the Spenders and I think what TCG is doing versus what go is doing is giving you the real IP fantasy of collecting the cards better than it didn't go and so if I were them and to capture you know the lower funnel which is what you're talking about which is the spender how do you communicate that in your ad of like why do you want to come here first of all and then why is it better to spend your money here than in that go game and and do it like that to mention they don't have to get their fat asses out of their chair right they

don't have to walk around right it's like yeah this is like a better dream right they just sit there [ __ ] laying their bed laying their couch and [ __ ] slipe all goddamn day [ __ ] dream accomplish femon noo oh my God oh my God that is the best if if I were the marketer on TCG I would be doing Pokemon noo ads all day long like sitting in your home comfortable Netflix and chill playing oh yeah AB we solved it we solved it solved it like last couple weeks ago it was you know put humans in a Pikachu outfit and du furry you know like ugc now it's this Pokemon noo Phil Phil you're like both we must like through osmosis I think I'm turning the three of you into marketers like I I am so proud of you right now thank you for this holiday gift I've always held the position that brand marketing is the funnest waste of money you can have on a compan budget I've always held that

position I kind of second that motion in in in in sort of in a way all right so what else we got Royal Kingdom so yeah so quick update on Royal Kingdom you know this isn't a deep dive right now but it's supposed to be one of the biggest launches of the year I think we owe it to check in and I think the tough part with this game is what do you Benchmark it against and so what I initially tried to do is look at category rankings for the United States for both Royal match and Royal Kingdom over time and one of I think the early data reads on Royal Kingdom has then it's been off to a slow start and when I looked at the kpis in terms of absolute values I agreed with that but what I benchmarked against the category rankings for Royal match when it came out it didn't launch at number one it actually had a little bit of a rocky start we're looking at the graph right here which is games casual for iPhone which I think is you know the most important category for this particular game but Royal match had a pretty Rocky history honestly for two years and I want to say rocky here but it was bouncing between let's say the 10th and 40th Place on a consistent basis and

then it just goes Super Saiyan in 2023 at the beginning of January they're just like [ __ ] it I guess they showed up with a you know a ton of UA money and they're just pushing this game to no one and that's really where it lifts off when we were going over those graphs comparing all the different key match games one of the things that really stood out was how fast Royal match had blown and blown up in terms of cor Revenue numbers and you can really see it reflected here and them you know like pushing UA and it's slipped a little bit Royal match recently it's unlodged its position and interestingly it's actually unlodged quite a bit since Royal Kingdom came out I'm sure that they're trying to reallocate some of the traffic but again when you look at it on this sort of basis then Royal Kingdom actually looks like a stronger more consistent start than Royal match had I would like to publicly announce that I am rocking my 10,000 level badge in Royal match thank you very much I have past 10,000 levels a huge accomplishment I expect award for me all next week and so I've been playing both games and just to get a

sense of like you know what's the differentiation and they are so similar they are so similar I can completely see a tradeoff happening from everything that you Phil and Laura said about like the progression of it in soft launch I feel like they were trying to go more Match 3 RPG puzzle RPG and then they dialed it all back to be a bit more casual and a bit more Roy Royal match and I would say the danger in that is I get a trade-off and sometimes I'm like well this one's newer maybe I just play this one and I've been lagging a little bit in my Royal match play to play more Royal Kingdom because it's difficult to kind of maintain both yeah I mean this has happened time and time again right I mean King has been dealing with this cannibalization issue forever right so it's way too early to start calling out cannibalization I just want to be clear on that you're right you're right yeah but so far it doesn't look good right like it it doesn't look great but 1 plus one is not going to equal two at this

rate it's probably likely 1.25 yeah no no no no it's not going to go down I don't think do you guys know how much dream has raised yeah that's the thing is that they're not going to meet those devaluation targets at that these levels no about 470 million Jes no yeah yeah almost half a billion yeah they have like a$ four billion dollar valuation right yeah yeah that's yeah that's not good I mean that's great I don't really understand this perspective because they've clearly already paid back the valuation just in Royal match itself and even if they only add 1.5 rather than one plus one are you kidding me i' I'd [ __ ] take half of a Royal match any day of the week you mean in terms of just beating marginal cost that's an insane opportunity I would take that every single time someone offered to me if this game does half the performance of Royal match it's half as additive but it still adds to the overall portfolio Revenue you're telling me you wouldn't take that a heartbeat because the other one was so monstrously half that success

sounds good to me again you have to keep in mind their valuation right like if it's four billion right they need a you know 30 40% uptick so they have to be worth like six billion Royal match has already done that Royal match is what doing over a billion a year so you FX that5 billion dollar company chis don't get don't get into valuation I mean I mean youin kidding me Phil do you know how are you just are you are you trolling no company worth five times Revenue right now in Mobile you're out of your goddamn [ __ ] mind don't worry about $100 cpis just put those aside you're out of your goddamn mind Phil like what is the mobile multiple right now CR I would say two at most maybe two and a half 10 times ebit right like that's that's the valuation right now it's crazy low right like I think some of it opens up next year with Trump and stuff with Acquisitions so that might actually help them Leo con is out I don't think they're for sale anyway I think dream games is kind of fiercely independent so

they could just [ __ ] cash out their you know operating profit and just dividend themselves out in Cypress or whatever the [ __ ] they do out there it's like they're fine right they're making tons of money and that's not what I'm saying I'm saying the $4 billion valuation is looking a little Rich right now right if if this game does not is not incremental you know because the valuations out there are not as high as what they're suggesting you won't find a lot of Turks cashing out in Cyprus just to be clear like there's a geopolitical thing that you miss where are they going where do they go well they're in tury they don't have to go anywhere they they go to Turkey the taxation is phenomenal for Founders let's transition to Squad Busters yes so Squad Busters has a little bit of a different looking chart so this is just this is the fin shark fin that's dude that's like a Mino fin it's not a shark fin it's a it's a fin from Finland so yeah anyway so this was before the release we're gonna talk about Squad

Buster's big update so before the update came out we're looking at November numbers like downloads collapsed Revenue has been steadily declining there's been this interesting narrative when whenever I talked to somebody about this they said well they're still making X and Y amount of Revenue like it's pretty good no and I'm like I'm like wait a minute are you talking about no like basically people are saying like anybody would take it I'm like yes but this is not anybody's game this is super game and it's not like they they didn't promote this game or launch it bigly like with the top tier Hollywood actors there has to be some context so this is like the dream would launch a game and if it would look like this would be would be having the same type of conversation anyway let's talk about the product so they released a big big update like one of those where where supercell is really trying to fix the game and IT addresses some of the core issues so let's talk about the things that the new update brings now you can choose a game mode so you can choose between four different m game modes you got The Showdown which is

a battle royale mode they did not have this before so here there's no more geming around you're just basically blasting in the last mon standing you got the gem hunt which is essentially the same game as I were before you got the duo gem hunt which is the same game as you had before but now you can partner up with a friend I think they had this before and then you have the squad League which is again a random game mode of the two previous one Showdown or gym hunt but now there's trophies and it's quite interesting or confusing or I don't know what to say that they did not have a competitive mode when they launched this game originally so weird but nevertheless there is a rank mold now here they removed the sort of a ticket system that they had it was basically a soft limit for a session because you could open up four chests with every win or three chests and then those tickets were out and they were again loading and so forth so basically a soft gate to after that you're not getting as many Rewards in my opinion this this removes significant coin sync because I would

buy with coins the tickets to earn more chests as I'm playing it's a powerful loss aversion mechanic and there's a daily win reward that replaces the ticket system the daily win reward essentially the same every two win you get a chest but now after you've gotten all the chests it just basically goes on a cool down so in shortly they wanted you to play a bit more to probably solve the engagement problem and then finally they removed the win streaks and that that was one of the key USBS that the game had is you again had a coin sync so you could pay coins in order to keep winning at this win streak reward setting there's way too much detail dude I don't even know we if anybody gives a [ __ ] but look when was this thing released because there's absolutely no impact just now it was it was this week this week yeah let me talk about three things that are issues with this game and whether they solve it so number one the the issue is the diversity of gameplay so the game play in Squad Busters not in my opinion is very predictable and repetitive because you

have a essentially a single game mode had a single game mode and little choice of different characters so now they added these new game modes the Battle Royale essentially the ranked and the jam hunt which is the Sim but to me when I was playing this game it didn't feel very different Battle Royale is a new game mode I understand why this game mode was not at launch because it's quite chaotic and in the end the area just gets smaller and just a mess of these little characters shooting at each other fun maybe for a couple of games but not very strategic to play more the second issue that the game had was accessibility and depth so what separates this game from brawl star is that the brawl star didn't lose the depth in favor of accessibility instead brawl star gradually exposes depth they add gadgets Gear star Powers every character has so much depth as players level up their individual Brawlers and unlock the new ones in the new Squad Buster update you can build your lineup before you start so that's kind of a like a way for them to add more strategy but it feels to me still a bit more

random maybe because there's so many of these small characters put together rather than the one that you playing with that you've equipped with certain gadgets and gears as in Brawl star and I feel like brawl star really has more Mastery still than Squad Busters and then that's you know because it's not as chaotic as the gameplay is so hold up zoom out for me zoom out for me let's go from product director to like supercell chief game officer what what are you going to do with this game right this game is performing at Heyday levels right now it is a rounding error on the p&l it's shown no improvement in the last year what do you tell the team what do you do with this product do you do what Clash mini we didn't get to cover this on the podcast but they're gonna fold yeah Clash mini into Clash Royale they're going to stuff the game mode in there do you stuff this into brawl star suddenly becomes an interesting play do you go games as a platform Phil this is an excellent point I think yes that that's the best way because the audience that should be playing this game is playing brawl stars all the kids are playing brawl Stars they're not

switching they don't give a [ __ ] about this game and it's worse game than than brawl Stars it has similar similar characters so I think it would make sense I don't know if it would do anything for brawl Stars it's a nice little update that's the only savior at this point that's the what you would do but then we have to think strategically from the management position they launched a game after five years of not being able to launch one and it has been a disaster to till date and so that really kind of showed that supercell can't launch like can launch games but but hasn't been able to launch a game that sustains so from management perspective what I would do is do everything possible throw as many bodies a need a change people just to to find a way to make this game work because I think this you know Sun that's total Sun cost Val yeah I I understand but like strategically as management I understand why they're trying to make this game work like you should you should do everything possible to make this game work it's like adding spice to [ __ ]

right like it's it's over right and so they're just going to keep shoveling it until like they explode right so just stop just stop it just stop move the [ __ ] on you have brawl Stars that's crushing it move the whole team to something else because this is game ain't working dude I agree but there's two points here there's The Logical what you just said what I think Phil has a you know perfect solution for it to make it a game mode that's a logical decision but then there's the illogical and that is what the management team probably wants to do is to Showcase that they can first of all ship games and the secondly they can turn around games just like they turned around brawl Stars they believe that they can turn this around and I don't think that they will put it as a mini game until they've exhausted all the options and I think we'll see it sometimes towards the end of next year you know what they should do they should sell to Netflix oh ouch hospice for free to play for one year for one year get some of their [ __ ] terrible

marketing money back right the thing is it'll do about 50 million in a year that's about what it made I know exactly yeah at least they get guaranteed Revenue right yeah Netflix has got checks they got money to [ __ ] burn over there dude all right let's go moving on so we're gonna end on the game awards so the game awards 2024 grows 31% to a record 54 million live streams wow and just massive and so we're looking at a chart here the magnitude of the game awards is is pretty impressive and my my new BFF yo V junin of of super Yos noted that the game awards is bigger than the Super Bowl's audience so Super Bowl sorry is that silly American football thing that we do every February where we all just gather around with our friends to watch commercials if if that's you know what what you'd like to do so the Super Bowl's audience actually last year had its biggest year in a long time and it was only around maybe 118 and million

viewers and and this is 154 so the graph that he has if you don't have his newsletter you should absolutely should or follow him on LinkedIn like the Academy Awards the gramys Major League Baseball's World Series and the Video Music Awards are all like I don't know 25 million and under viewers each and every year so when you think about the game industry and you think about people watching this my question is like why the hell are we not more popular in pop culture with like mainstream like nobody talks about it like Jeff Keeley is like is now more popular than like any of the host of these other he could probably say he's more popular than some of these American football players no no let's just stop I'm kidding all right let's just hold the phone for a second okay first of all when you talk about the Super Bowl it is act viewership like engagement like people watching like feverishly the entire game

right when you talk about these like Network digital networks like YouTube twitch steam Facebook Tik Tock live WeChat bab hya all these different platforms these are not people necessarily engaging 100% of the time watching three hours of [ __ ] [ __ ] right these are like people hopping in hopping out right part of the problem with twitch has always been the fact that people aren't even actively watching twitch as they watch the streams it's like on the background on a different monitor or something so they're not really comparable is what I'm trying to say from a gage perspective to your point Eric and I think there's actually a really important point on definition here because the only way I could see this number reported is 154 million was a press release from the Video Game Awards yeah I call [ __ ] on this I I like to understand how they did their accounting because NE when you look at Super Bowl and you look at all these other TV ratings neiel has boxes that are literally installed people's homes that measures what they're watching and they have a sample on what it counts to be

considered a viewer and I guarantee you that the Video Game Awards did not use the same methodology and you're telling me or definition of VI well the plot thickens because the numbers that they did site from specific platforms I think they said around two million from YouTube they said around you know around maybe a million from twitch but when you add those up I'm like how do you get to 154 million on the spreadsheet it's like are you telling me WeChat is 100 million Video Game Awards was this translated in China all kind of it's all kind of Clips it has to be Tik Tok views it has to be all of that because like that's an really important point when people are throwing this number around that no one has given context to okay but I'm calling out yos for a second here right he must know that this stuff is not accurate right in in a in a way he's like a really really really smart guy so I hear what you guys are saying and you know the the article from Venture beat actually is where they covered a lot of this as well and there's a lot of data on is just is just press releases though

it's just press it's literally stated is their purpose is to be a press release blog well yeah this is not a neelon like you you know this is very difficult to do a Ono one and what you're talking about with neelson and by the way I don't even know if that's all that great because that basically extrapolates 3,000 people in the country watching something and then says well like that's a portion of the US population so itates that model has been around for decades like and it's been and it's used for actually ad dollars right like it's actually well respected my methodology that is actually used for real money right if this did 154 million where are the $30 million 30 second ad spots or something like if that's that was the big question here like if you just put this together if it was that much I want to know how much an ad spot was and we know they do sell 600,000 are you kidding me 154 million 154 million for that much that cost per impression is [ __ ] nothing that price should be way higher if this was legitimate well so he's got two

events He's Got The Summer Event and he's got the game awards and by the way I don't know if you would sit through the Oscars or any of these other shows and where half or more of the stream was basically commercials yeah no one watches them the Grammys suck no one's watching that [ __ ] anymore the ratings are in all-time lows agree and so is Major League Baseball Super Bowl is the only one that has an upse here because it's exciting I don't think our industry has the cash and by the way all of the ads are from game industry when you have those other platforms your whole purpose is to pull in Brands to advertise in your spots so our audience would not be okay with a Budweiser Nike [ __ ] ad inside of the you're hitting 154 million you have to have a big cross-section we should at least see razor products being advertised Monster Energy Drink dread no because no one's looking at the no one's engaged enough to look at ads I mean that it's this is all clips and [ __ ] dude I I don't like this I don't like the gaslighting either I think people throwing the stuff out there and they

know it's not accurate and they just do it anyway Yos knows better right I know he knows better right and he has some other agenda for putting this stuff out there but like it doesn't make sense to me that people are so focused on this but you guys put in the statista thing which was the same numbers statista just sources from other places statista is the Wikipedia of of Statistics it should not be trusted but but it also it gives more context about what the properties were and if look at the properties they're all [ __ ] right it's like what do you mean the properties are [ __ ] like well WeChat you know Tik Tok live Facebook these are not like engagement platforms these are just like quick hit type platforms right on a relative basis this is really good for the game awards right the fact is they are using the same methodology to track how many people are interested in this content right there are more people that are interested in this content therefore there are likely more people that are interested in games and stuff like that this is all good for the business but what where it's disingenuous is when you're comparing it to completely different metrics that are on completely different systems and methodologies yeah

and that that's the part that's bothering me so good for Jeff key we need stuff like this because we don't have showcases for games anymore because e3's gone so this is a good way of doing that a three-hour marathon of some nonsense by all measures by the people I listen to anyway they all loved it like this year was a lot better than last year yeah he did a much better job of pulling it together from a Content perspective so hats off to him I just wouldn't be comparing it to NFL to be clear like we were all positive about the event but in order to compare apples to apples you would probably have to add all the Tik Tok and YouTube shorts of a Super Bowl with with all the takes and all the Press like everything from that and then put that number which would be like I don't know 15 billion and start comparing it so that's not what they added though they added the viewing of the event on those platforms think about them as networks and the challenge so the challenge that we have it is out so listen number one you're right it's apples and oranges but because of the platform you know the

distribution is through YouTube and then there's all of these co- viewing events and so they are counting all of that and you're right perhaps we're not counting all of the people who might be streaming the Super Bowl and and watching that they're only counting the fox or the NBC broadcast number so I get what you're saying however I do think that pretend like it was a little bit less I mean it's massive 154 versus most of those other major events at like 25 even if it's half it's still Lighty your Lighty year get it Buzz Lightyear anyway it's a call back that was a call back to an earlier part of the episode so anyway okay so let me just do a quick like winners and losers because I would love to hear what you guys actually liked for it so just a quick summary so Astro Boy got a game of the year they got a few other Awards as well announcements that were pretty big I you know The Witcher four that looked pretty amazing there's a little bit of controversy because Siri is going to be

the main character and it's not g wait ger Geral of Riviera geralt geralt ah I even like the Netflix show and I messed up his name so little bit of controversy that there's a female character for Witcher even though they pretty much set that up in The Witcher 3 from 2015 anyway the new Elden ring which has multiplayer got a lot of really positive reviews yeah okay by the way by the for the record this is really smart for from software rather than doing Elden Ring 2 and doing the same exact game they're actually innovating and like building something new with Co-op and more multiplayer like this actually gives a reason for people to come back those the people that bought the game that didn't necessarily like it will actually have a CH have an opportunity to come and try this game with something different so this is really smart I think from from agreed a lot of nostalgic titles another Tekken a ninja gayen oh my God I'd love playing that on the sred Genesis back in the day I play the [ __ ] out of that game and there were a few other nostalgic titles that got announced so some of the controversies black myth so you know did

they won the best action game I think they were a little bit upset that they didn't get the game of the year and so they expressed some of that on social media and and so that was a bit of a controversy and then the players voice award debate a number of the titles were like the gotcha based games and those games may have incentivized players to vote for them which like hey in these award shows that's what everyone does if you ever seen a Webby oh my God the Webb I think their entire strategy is to get the host to talk about them to vote for the wees even though so I don't know how the webbi makes money but I imagine that's the case there so wait wait wait wait hold on so Mo Miyo sorry Miyo mihoyo mihoyo dude they bribe their players to vote for them in this thing that is [ __ ] awesome they won three of the five that's crazy all fair and freeto play Warfare I know that's right Philip black is just like

screaming the roof he's like well what if they what if we could Monti [ __ ] dirty [ __ ] though that is some dirty [ __ ] right there what if you get gacha polls if you agreed to go vote for it like that's going to be your next thing is hey everybody go vote for us and we'll give you free polls I just love when monetization wins over the Reddit gamer it like goes into their Reddit spaces I'm sure this just drove them insane so did you guys have any like takes things you liked or didn't like from The Game of War I'm happy we have another marketing vehicle that's good for industry GDP and I'm pro-industry GDP I think gas are weird like when people just dress up like I I'm so used to the Hollywood beautiful people dressing up and then when we the normal plbs dress up it's just not the same the one other thing to mention is they gave a game changer award to Amir satvat who is kind of you know the game industry Saint who is trying to help folks to get jobs in the industry and I was a little sad to hear that there was a lot of push back against him and he

and his family even got death threats because people yeah no it's really sad you know he's out there just trying to help in his spare time and and people were like oh you work for 10 cent so you're the cause of this problem and like the guy has to work right like he can't just do all this for free he does it in his spare time actually so he's got to have a job to like take care of his family so that I thought that was pretty shitty hey if you're in the game industry like you know give this guy a Kudo for out it's a numbers game he has a huge following there's going to be a bunch of [ __ ] in that as well like it's a numbers game when you have a big enough audience so that's it the announcement from uh Naughty Dog about intergalactic intergalactic the heretic I think that's risky but I think that's pretty cool that they didn't do another last of us or something like that but it's like a a Sci-Fi like action adventure game yeah I think that was cool [ __ ] they got a lot of [ __ ] I don't want to get into it but the main character is an Asian person can't tell if if it's a non-binary individual or not and so the hate that they got for

having a Dei character it's the new thing to do if you don't have a white male lead for a video game you're gonna get [ __ ] on in this AG let's move on [Laughter] Touch look at that is Sant big goofy looking white guy on the podcast I'm going to move on all right everybody thank you so much for this week we're going to be back next week with an unfiltered episode we're not going to script anything and we're just goingon to talk out of our ass so come back just like every if you're having a shitty day with your family and you want to walk outside with your dog or just kick rocks listen to this podcast next week all right bye 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 group if you have 5 years or more of games

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