TWIG #314 Market Predictions, Nintendo Leaks and an Award Ceremony

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to deconstructor refund this weekend games number 316 where we give you our game industry Insider takes on the top gaming news stories each and every week I am Jen donaho I play the marketing and Publishing role on our twig Squad RPG whatever we are so today we have maybe he'll get it Phil black monetizations are game Economist Consulting still doesn't get it but okay yeah Eric Crest screaming at the clouds M gof the founder Whisperer I'm gonna keep that and then we got Adam Adam the product guy keeping prodct guy product guy the monotone the monotone I like that that's good even ke so we have five today so lots of folks on the podcast because we are going to do a few different things one is talk about the Nintendo leaks

that happened over a break because we've been off for well last time we did our nominees for the golden twigs and so we didn't really cover the news so we'll do what's going on with Nintendo leaks Marvel Rivals season 1 launch and it's crushing it the golden twe winners for 2024 excited to go through you all voted and we can give you who won that and then if we get there Mr tiler games cost a lot more to make who knew who knew games are expensive to make use AI so the very first thing on a on a serious note is I'm in Los Angeles and Mishka said that nobody in Europe cares but I'm going to make you care for half a second the California wildfires are um it's apocalyptic here an area greater than the size of San Francisco and Boston have burned to the ground it looks like a war zone it looks like a bomb went off if anyone is in the game industry in Los Angeles so many of my co-workers my friends my friends

families have lost their houses completely have nothing I don't know what to do to help but to direct you to there's a GoFundMe that is giving out $1,000 dollar right away if you were impacted I have some deconstructor fund t-shirts like that's not really going to help but I'm happy to like drive over and drop off some T-shirts and then kind of on the the lighter side of this is my friend Lee has a place in the Palisades and ironically his house is still standing but everything AC Ross the street has been absolutely wiped out I think his house is still standing because he has a ctio so a ctio is a enclosure that they built outside of their house and I think that it makes the house still stand so that's the side picture but go to the front of the house like everything around the window they built that for the cats so Lee's house has nine lives thanks to the ctio um so if you can if you're listening please

just go give a little bit of money to the GoFundMe or to the firefighters just to help out someone needs children or a hobby you always say this with kids yes don't you need a permit for that in California to build one of those children probably probably it's pretty awesome all right so let's transition to Shilling what do we got going on pgc's coming up right to be clear I do care my sister lives in La she lives in uh culur City so that's a really close to the fires so she's been living in an LA for 25 years and she does not want my doof t-shirt but luckily also her house didn't burned out anyways if you can help reach out it would be cool to do by the way some kind of a if we can do an event not like a happy go-lucky event but more of a supper club event that would be great to do in LA and kind of with the folks bringing people together so first the chilling part one thing that we forgot to shill it was now shared by Tom Tom store right Phil he he was sharing it on LinkedIn it was the

episode with your father David Nelson episode 260 did you enjoy that Phil it was a good episode David is a compelling speaker people should go listen we also consult together with Tom on like a lot of puzzle games and gamification stuff it's a lot of fun exactly so so David Nelson is an OG King guy he's just a unique character so he was on a podcast that's episode 260 I forgot to talk about it but go listen it's an onside episode and really fun one and then I had the most difficult last name on the podcast so Joel vatal who is the CEO of pvx Partners but we do talk about UA and growth but mostly it's about a sort of a Founder story it was filmed right at the last end of slush so we were both really really really tired it's like a five-day event and so I have bags below my my eyes and everything so but it's a it's a fun conversation and and very much sort of a Founder seeking and then on PGC the Supper Club is full we were able to make a lot of people angry because they did not get the

tickets so I probably shilled a little bit too much that one threatening emails DMs I got them all so thank you for send keep Shilling it keep talking about it that's a good idea some of them were threatening the uh anyways okay so so enough of that I'll be cooler but where there is still space uh same venue so Soho House on Monday so not Sunday supper club on Monday we have PGC after dark there's going to be a link in the description of this podcast so that's a sort of a mixer you know very very casual event that's going to run deep and then I want to show the predictions so 2025 mobile gaming predictions we have several one of them coming so I wrote more on gaming we got marketing we got Investments and some app stuff coming in in this week and following week so six predictions I already got you know direct feedback by Mr CR and Jen that I should have written about one of them so the the predictions were that one 2025 will be better but not by much the second one was subscription gaming

dry spells ahead number three was AI in gaming incremental but not transformative number four was gaming VC's expand Beyond games number five was Western Publishers distance themselves from China and number six was the one that I got the the most I would say feedback feedback on both sides I'll be honest was de faces backtracking it was not my goal to be any way political just wanted to talk about the content because Di has affected somewhat the content that we've had and it will be affecting it differently due to the backtracking that's it so any of these you don't agree or disagree apart from from the last one that I should not maybe have done because it comes off very political all right well yeah give feedback on the slack Channel if you're part of the slack Channel or just go to LinkedIn and give mka all the hate on LinkedIn yeah but do you guys do you guys agree or disagree with with some of them like no good fine okay except for one yeah not

content wise he just don't one of be okay got it it's fine I think Ai and gaming the one thing I would say is yet yeah like I think that we've seen a bunch of like jazz hands which is you know it's just be [ __ ] right now but people are starting to get there it might not be this year but it might it's going to be a little while right but his predictions are for 2025 so yeah then 25 agree probably not there yet [Music] attention marketers are you ready for an event that will supercharge your strategies and leave you talking it for months to come on January 28 in San Francisco abser mama takes Center Stage as the must attend event for marketers tackling the industry's toughest challenges from privacy restrictions and signal loss issues to measuring Omni Channel Roi and boosting LTV for high value users you'll gain actionable insights from the brightest Minds in

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when it was really hot hot hot and boooo and all the rest of those companies were killing it supposedly theoretically because it sucks dude everything was wrong about mobile game development could be summarized in hyper casual and most importantly it was destined to fail right because it was an absolute Unholy alliance between U and creative that was the most ridiculous circle jerk in gaming at the time so anyway I still reserve the right to believe what I believe about hyper casual because it's [ __ ] truth but having said that Anthony Pascal made some good points on the redeeming qualities of hyper casual and I just you know I want to pretend to be objective for a moment and talk about what he said so he basically said a couple three things one there were Innovations in gameplay that hyper casual brought to the table right he said like things like the runners Rog likee mechanics you know jetpack jump 2D puzzle shooting you know and some of the

AI integration within games draw it from quali Heber mentioned some of what they did in hyper casual was very Innovative on the gameplay and actually contributed to the overall ecosystem of mobile gaming so that is I would agree with that the second thing was like the learning from the user acquisition so the fact that how like fast-paced and Hyper casual games were it actually created a very short life cycle to help kind of experiment around UA and I think that really helped improve the ecosystem from that perspective I would say but it also contributed to the downfall of the ecosystem by pissing off Apple but that's a whole other thing and despite being Bottom Feeders as I suggested last week for casual games according to him anyway was for fun right for Anthony and others in the space because they were able to create games and create Innovations very quickly you know as they shoveled out more and more sh every [ __ ] week right so in that

sense it was an effective way of iterating and innovating in the space so I guess there are some redeeming qualities for the otherwise unredeem chapter in the history of mobile game development and thank God it's over but there are some contributing factors to the overall ecosystem that remain I I agree with you on this like the one thing I'll say is I used to make mobile games back in like 2008 on the iPod touch right and there was an ecosystem at that time of just make fun fast games in a matter of months with a super small team and those periods of time throughout gaming history have always been the funnest to be able to develop games when you know all of like the top charts were never static everything was new going up and down the charts all the time I remember that time it it was a very fun time to be building games so there was definitely the appeal initially for hyper casual of the same thing of like hey now instead of where are the industries at right now of franchises and live Services effectively

mean that you're live operating the same thing over and over again that we now have the opportunity to create new games at a very rapid pace and I think hyper casual was able to do that it appeals to a type of gamer that's looking for that casual pickup and play experience you know I've been in casual a lot of my gaming career and you know Finding easy pickup andplay games is difficult to do and these games have a ton of success but I think as game industry people here I recognize this has a both sides issue I also recognize this is like a way to deliver ads and is you know Crest like you always say just like UA Arbitrage it's just it's [ __ ] so there I think this has two sides to your point and I think you you aggressively represented one of the sides last week yeah I mean my my whole purpose in life is to simplify simplify simplify and exaggerate right so there's a lot of new that's like left out of the equation

right so thank you Anthony for keeping me in check moving on moving on all right I want to do a quick recap of the leaks on the switch to because it's kind of like baby watch like any day now we are wa you know any minute now we're waiting for Nintendo to announce the switch 2 so the leaks that have come out came from CES CES is a consumer electronic show that happens in Las Vegas every year and so this accessory maker called Gen Kai showcased a mockup of the switch 2 in their booth just to give you a sense of what it looks like which basically it looks like the switch one I think it's just a little bit it has a larger display magnetic joycon attachments allegedly Nintendo actually came out and responded by stating that these images and mockups are unofficial and were not provided by Nintendo so more on that in a second because more leagues came out from on leaks and 911 mobile and so Nintendo

ironically did not issue the same statement for the second set of leaks but I I want us to listen to the language and notice the very specific language that these are unofficial and not provided by the company does not say that this is [ __ ] so likely this is probably close to what it is they just they had to use more legal language so any minute now I think we'll probably get I've heard the 16th so by the time this airs was one of the dates that got thrown out by I think gamesbeat actually said keep an eye on that so we'll we'll probably see a Nintendo Direct soon and maybe John Cena will come back and help us launch the switch to like the switch one I don't know if you remember that but John Cena was like the spokesperson like in 2017 yeah it pretty funny John Cena is like the celebrity that will not go away people h i mean he was just in bro star for the SpongeBob thing yeah no he's Goofy yeah makes a lot of money all

right so that's switch to you want to talk about your $3 billion how you're spending it Mishka oh yeah so in Investments we got two Investments one of them is like this is close to games but this is not games based so us-based metaverse xrn web 3 company infinite reality their clients are Riot blizzard and twitch that's marked on their front page so it is you know touching on business they've raised $3 billion in funding ROM from an undisclosed investors I why anyways focus on Global Tech and real estate this latest round increases the company's valuation to 12.3 billion and what's interesting about this is the whole web3 metaverse crypto is back like this is insane amount of valuation I went actually to this company's web page the infinite reality and it's hard to understand what they actually do it seems like they're making like almost like you know like in Roblox you can make like a Disneyland or a Gucci land but they make that but in like a little bit of a higher Fidelity yeah they you know we're back to crazy days so so

Fidelity in what like in Roblox if Roblox is a prototype then they would do that same thing but in like like almost like what's Meta Meta version what platform are they launching them I I think they've done it on web and on like these like you put on these glasses and now you can walk around and like watch a a sports show and then there's like Bose ads and and that kind of stuff like if you just go to infinite reality.com and just be amazed on what investors are funding so that's hold on maybe I can help well so first of all my plea to marketers is please say something this is the first thing on the website infinite reality is powering the next generation of Commerce creativity and connection through Ai and immersive technologies that tells me [ __ ] all about what you are like literally what what does that even say so I'm watching the video a 3D World Builder helping you up your web game so it looks like a web it looks like Roblox for adults yeah

maybe just like 3D experiences in the web so using like webg yep but for advertisers everything was for advertisers I love how on the podcast were just like learning about this in real time no no no no oh wait whoa whoa whoa Adam Adam I did my diligence I went through this website for [ __ ] like 20 minutes and I still don't know what the [ __ ] these guys do okay one of the press releases was infinite reality and pairpoint to unveil mixed reality experience at gitex Global infinite reality to Showcase first of its kind AI speech to speech Avatar sales associate in apple Vision Pro right like a press release yeah ex what did you just say exactly I don't know this company is [ __ ] dude absolute [ __ ] someone explain to me what the [ __ ] this thing is I'm going to throw this into Ai and AI will tell me moving on so so this was the crazy investment I just wanted to throw it cuz

it was insane but this is a good one turkey based mobile game developer Grand games has secured $30 million in series a funding led by bolderton I think their investor in dream as well so another snatch from them with participation from our friends at Laton Ventures Crest what do you think about this investment brli dude you can't keep the Turkish down dude dude turkey for the win D they just keep ranking no AI and they still make games anyway they're making games they're they're to win it yeah and their pri so Grand games previously raised preedee of 3 million in July 24th so this is six months later from precede getting a 10x markup for investors I bet Laton was was invested in the three mil this is magic sword right like magic sword and car match Magic sword's crushing it yeah all right so we're going to shift to the games category just a quick update CU I I'm on the email list for supercells

project rise it's their next game uh they've been in pre-alpha for a while and they just announced that they're going from pre-alpha to Alpha starting this weekend and going to the Android phone so if you're interested you can sign up and be a part of the alpha if you want to see supercell's next game that is in the works so maybe we'll talk about them a lot later but Adam let's do your favorite topic that Marvel Rivals was going to be dead after a month isn't that right isn't that wasn't that your prediction that was not my prediction that was Crest GPT which is so far pretty incorrect so I'm not going to be using Crest GPT forecasting models CR GPM that's it I gotta I gotta update my model yeah Ju Just to be clear here I was 100% right initially but I was 100% wrong after the fact right because I was the one that was bullish on this game from the very get-go that this would actually make it make a dent in the market my AI engine just did not quite work in terms of ipating I fed into that

AI engine some bad inputs and then the output was incorrect let's go with that exactly yeah but yeah let's talk about Marvel Rivals they're season one so after a month they are continuing to have their moment but you're seeing some very irregular patterns for what typical CCU looks like for launch for that Spike to happen for Marvel Rivals it started right around I think boxing day which was a few days after their major event but then just recently they had a major season one Spike which has grown past their first day Spike so again very rarely would you ever see this on PC console so what's great season one just does not seem to be slowing the pace of live content the other two games we've been tracking Delta forth and Path of Exile Delta Force continues to be steady I don't know Adam do you trust the Delta Force PSU chart have you ever seen anything as steady as this since launch does that seem right to you it doesn't and also when you look at like the hourly CCU you're like that that doesn't make a lot of sense given the Oral B where is this game made of I don't know

why they would have Bots they wouldn't be registered as players unless they were like farming items but I don't think there's I haven't seen peer-to-peer trade Maybe I'm Wrong on that I mean we're covering Rainbow Six Siege which had that but I'm expecting a lot more volatility in CCU charts based on content and you just don't see any of it with Delta Force which is just so odd Marvel Rivals I believe but I don't believe the Delta Force CC I I don't think PA of Exile is settled yet it's still got some declines to brace the other thing that I'm really interested in Adam is like this concept that like hey they just came out in Early Access they've got this huge second wave for PA of Exile coming I don't really agree with that like this is launch like when you go out for Early Access it is launch like you rarely have this gigantic second hump that exceeds your first hump like shouldn't you plan if you're developer on Early Access launch being significant like it's not just a testing phase anymore it's it's go go go go go yeah but number one by going premium up front

which I think we both agreed with was the right strategy for this means that you're going to get this curve right like it is nearly impossible for them to have a flat curve cheating like Delta or like Marvel given just the rate of decline that they're going to have in their their unit sales so I still even see this like if we were to look at this against like an Elden ring or like a hell divers which had quite strong retention right from launch that will probably see similar patterns like this is a pretty good outcome out the likea but I think as a PVE game given the complexities of their economy there is no good Early Access like there's been so many cases where Diablo and all these PVE games tried to do testing with endgame players before launch and then nail retention nail endgame but you can even see here like even Path of Exile 2 which literally had a blueprint with Path of Exile one still has not figured out endgame engagement right from launch and needs time to perfect so so for me I think this is par for the course for PVE

service and I do I I think they will get a spike with the free-to-play launch I think that given the spike at day one it probably won't be as big as we intended but there has been plenty of examples of free-to-play games coming out you know 12 months after lunch and then getting that Spike like that free-to-play shift actually being meaningful even for things like Sims 4 right like when it was like what like 10 years after they launch I don't know what the DAT was but Sims was pretty late in launch but yeah I think going back to Marvel Rivals though like my my takeaway here is when Phil you and I chatted right when it launched we were talking about its weakness and Mastery and progression and that it nailed accessibility probably had a really really strong initial retention but we were but I I was bearish on it sort of slung to retention the only thing that could come up from that is if it's got an aggressive life model which obviously n has been able to absolutely nail right now so I think overall I was wrong that Mastery would pull thing down because they've been able to overcome that with a very

aggressive live content schedule throughout December and now coming into season one so I want to see how this goes but all signs are very very positive for Marvel rivels the one caveat that I'll put to all this is like if you're a developer looking at this space and you're trying to you know apply learning series like this is not a model that you can apply to a lot of different contexts similar to like a supercell like how many people can actually deploy this much content this fast at that level of fidelity and the reality is they nailed accessibility core gameplay and had the IP on top of that content Cadence all at once that's the bar to release and how many developers can do that and so far at least good but they're also eating apex's lunch evidently right now like I've been hearing is like well Apex had been continually down and then also probably OverWatch but I can take a look at that yeah I would love to see this with some of like fortnite Apex OverWatch the other kind of popular

Shooters to see if there's cannibalization going on be interesting to see that but I think as well like usually right from these launches you don't typically see it right from Dow people assume that as soon as a game launches gets a big spike that Dow will just plummet in those games and it's just not those signals are not that strong they don't actually see that yeah it's not the same thing kind of saw it on League when fortnite launched but you know maybe that was back and like Minecraft Saw big decline but then like fortnite didn't see a blip when Apex launched even though they saw it internally and they still acted on it so yeah I think likely over time they're gonna have to introduce more progression I don't think Mastery will be their angle and that's how they'll be differentiated but leading more into progression giving them more fuel for liveops I think is the likel thing and overall there's been like steam Revenue performance in terms of ranks has so far looked very Stellar but the actual strategy here is very player friendly so I want wanted to pass it to still to talk about what's your long-term

prospects on Marvel Rivals monetization I I don't think the Mastery point is gone though even I mean to your point like your Nuance here was that the content pipelines have overcome any weakness they had in character Mastery like that is one way to win like the Western approach which is more labor saving because labor is so expensive here is like okay we're going to build these OverWatch two style characters and you're going to spend thousands of hours to master something like the roadhog hook that single mechanic like the productivity of their content is so much higher and like okay you can win by just throwing characters at it and each character can have a shorter retention curve but if you just have more characters you know you stack those on top of one another and I thought the thing that was fascinating to hear them come out and say is that they said every month and a half like every six weeks which is an extremely aggressive schedule you know let's say they get to eight characters a year that's about double the content pace of a something like an OverWatch or something like an apex Legends like that's twox the content paas of a lot of key major Western games and that is like really showcasing I think the strength of

Chinese development which is something that I feel like we didn't see at launch I felt like this was a pretty be bones game there wasn't a lot of systems there was very little monetization vectors they're using the direct purchase cosmetic model rather than just layering on what I thought Apex solved which is like the the loot Box model you also saw in OverWatch originally was that you have a crafting currency you open up boxes it's very simple maybe you layer on some liveops events I I don't think they've solved monetization their revenue numbers based on a recent report were about 100 36 million in the first month and that is including China that was an estimate from a Chinese internet blog and also included the direct distribution Revenue something we haven't touched on a lot but remember they also distributed this game with its own launcher which is something that you don't see in a lot of platform data and of course there's EGS and when I worked it backwards from the VG insights ma number of 16 million I got about $3.40 arpo for the first month which felt a little bit low for Golden cohort I'd love to see that be even higher I think they could have made even more money but when you compare it to something like path of EX which of course did have some MTX it

made more than that box product based on VG insights which is reporting around 90 million rep of Exile too I think that's really low again we have to factor in all the things I just talked about different launcher higher RP curves which are or sales which are on the website but I think that's also an interesting comparison is like in the long run this game can generate a [ __ ] ton of money right like 150 million a month like that's over a billion dollar run rate like let's cook like this is a really big success story because if can you imagine if this didn't work out imagine if we were looking at like head of 2 declining Marvel like if Marvel did not succeed that is an awful storyline for games heading into 2025 like if this if this didn't work what what hope is there for the rest of us yeah it's it's super impressive there's actually a lot of LinkedIn articles on this as well and this one from will Cahill had a chart for Marvel Rivals steam average daily rank for all countries since launch and so if you're if you're seeing the chart green is a higher rank red is a lower Rank and so basically the chart shows

like all the different countries and it is averaging number one for us Australia Canada UK Belgium Netherlands France Brazil Australia Germany and Italy so you know us and Western Europe China and Korea have started slow and saw their best rankings at five and nine now remember again like for China I think they're on their a whole different system you know if you're a steam ranking in China it's Phil's favorite topic of like hm are you really though but what I'm wanted to point out is that nety is a Chinese company making a hero shooter that is resonating in the west more so than the East more so and then Korea with Western IP with Western IP right and and so the other picture I want to show is I think maybe the reason why they are having success is the internet is going crazy around the art style and the way that the comic book characters are coming to life so this is the Fantastic Four this is invisible

woman and uh Reed Richards Mr Fantastic and no matter what your sexual preference is apparently everyone is going nuts over the sexiness of these two characters I think what's happening is that the way that they chosen to depict the comic book characters is resonating globally except for Korea apparently Koreans have a very diff and Japanese have a very different kind of taste and Aesthetics versus what you see in Western Comics and so this is kind of interesting to me that people were a flutter with these two characters um it reminds me of like the old days of comics where characters were drawn very sexy I don't know I don't know a better word for than that so anyway that's my take Chris you want to comment on that one not particularly no I will say it's ironic that some a Chinese developer for games is the only one that's actually keeping Marvel alive right now I know Disney completely annihilates and destroys like every Goodwill they had

with their consumer so at least someone's doing right by the by the IP so I know I well just kudos to Ny Chinese based company resonating in the west like you know after black myth I don't know I I think that's the trend of 2025 is Chinese or Eastern developers finally unlocking Western magic and taking over there unless they get banned well yes oh shoot yeah we didn't even talk about the Tik Tok band Tik Tok oh my God yeah we days away my my my daughter was in a [ __ ] Panic dude she was like saving like every single thing that she's done on Tik Tock so that she keeps it for posterity dude she's freaking out man yeah that's been her life since she was like 12 it's a real thing it is so big Tik Tok event at GDC right Mishka yeah yeah no oh so so in this crazy world that we live in I totally imagine like Elon Musk buying Tik toac he's already bought America so why not buy Tik Tok as well it it's yeah

it's one of the rumors yeah he's he's buddies with CCP so that should work anyways I'm feeling confident I'm feeling confident that our event will move forward that's all right all right let's get to the golden twig winners and so Phil maybe what you can do is Flash each one of these up on the screen and before before we start before we start do we have a a right to Super the voting or are we basically just taking whatever is voted on I we could do it Eurovision style yeah there could be like a jury selection and there could be points from the judges but I think we should keep it to the people yeah keep it to the people all right 100% the people you know what I give you one veto Cris okay all right all right how about that yeah I think that's fair or people can vote after this and then we'll close the voting if there's like final changes because some of them are like one percentage away from each other you do like a two-thirds override yeah well we will need to tie break on some of these to be honest with you some of

them are really close yeah I I think there's only one that I'm I'm like passionate yeah all right all right so let's go through each one number one is talk of the year so this is the new story that broke the internet in 2024 and by a margin of 74% it was the mass layoffs that one out number two seems to be big Tech fails in games again again this was CH this was yours the Microsoft failure so pretty dominant sorry Microsoft and Netflix don't forget Netflix got it so any comments on that one who gets the who gets the price for Mass layoffs embracer talk about later on I'm prer is gonna have like a [ __ ] ton of they're GNA clean house man oh okay okay all right number two is correction or oops we did it again oh God our most embarrassing predictions so

this is a tie but right now Phil Leads with 38% on Squad Busters will become supercell's most downloaded game yeah number two at 28% is Mishka AI will revolutionize how games are being made and number three is at 20% Which is Crest is Ubisoft will execute against Star Wars Adam you and I are very safe people should want to dunk on you guys I don't understand why they don't want to dunk on you guys I think it's awesome I would never pass up that opportunity I I think this makes sense Phil you you that was an idiotic statement back then and I I I you know every it made no sense so let's this is one's obvious we drank the Kool-Aid this is the one where we all had to make up other options so it wasn't all like Phil and supercell no all right sorry for Squad Buster stat too we'll hold up well all right sorry my friends all right number three is the most damage taken and this is company damage

or it could have been something else so the winner it looks to be with 47% is Ubisoft for everything that Ubisoft did I think my I think I had in here like it took it took a massive hit to the overall company number two is 28 29% Netflix and number three is gaming VCS so I think that was my call I think that was me yeah yeah but Chris is this your veto no no no this is not my veto dude dude Ubisoft was a disaster of Epic Proportions I think I spoke way too much about Ubisoft over the last year I would just add the French in this as well God why just because I just want to piss off the French Voodoo and hom and who else is who are also the big ones tap Nation ketchup P you name it Game Loft oh game so Adam yeah I think this one was yours I think voted on another one was Ubisoft that I put in but all right so Ubisoft

is going to win this one with almost half the votes number four most disappointing game a little bit close on here right now Concord is leading with 44% number two is Squad Busters at 37% a distant third is Call of Duty war zone with 11% I'm surprised about this because Adam said it right he was like who's anticipating Concord like it wasn't like yeah this this is the one that I had a little bit of issue with because I actually do agree with Mr Adam Telfer that no one gave a [ __ ] about conquered from the get-go right like there was no anticipation whatsoever for this game hell I didn't even know it existed really like until it was a disaster but Squad Busters on the other hand I mean they spent a [ __ ] gajillion dollars marking this thing that's complete trash and it's super sell right so the industry is expectations are really high for a game that they haven't released a game in a long time so it's like yeah this one I'm I think I might have a veto on this one

if if I can get some consensus so but how much money do you think Squad rusters lost versus Concord like if disappointing is actually commercial loss could Concord have actually won based on that maybe yes it's definitely the most negative no no question it was discussed publicly like how much they lost like there was constant leaks of like how many hundreds of millions yeah yeah nine figures well it was estimated between that Dev was just 200 to 400 million and there was some discrepancy in which which one of those and then you layer in marketing and so maybe you are at 400 million loss and that but that's like they shut the game down after two weeks Squad Busters is at least making money yeah it's still alive 50 million for a lawn put up 400 million for Squad Busters I don't think so oh God no oh no no that would be crazy like so to be honest the people have spoken Concord was like had the highest expectations from Sony because obviously he had to go

above the 400 million whatever hypothetical number is and then and Squad posers didn't have the same expectations so you you go yeah all right people people are I voted for Squad Busters but I I I understand the [Music] people kickass liveops need kickass tools that's where heror 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 Ops 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 maned subscriptions and streamline Payment Solutions worldwide unlock new markets and maximize profitability through their customized secure payment architecture and dedicated support team exola empowering game developers to achieve Global [Music] success all right number five is mice nuts this is the best financially well we put meaningless although I think the winner is not meaningless but this was like a great great creative fun game that doesn't make a lot of money the winner by far is batro I'm actually very happy that this is actually the people voted for this game I thought that people would be revolting against it because it seems like this absolute darling of a game

that people are still quoting of making $100,000 a day you know on the store Etc but I think the danger with these type of games is like oh yeah well we can make premium games again right let's let's all start working on premium games on mobile which represents like a fraction of a percent no it's probably like 2% of the overall Market because of Minecraft but this is clearly the winner of the year right for for this particular category in my opinion I mean hearing that mice nuts is becoming a thing in terms of like some of the developers especially in Turkey I've heard that teams have opted out of making mobile games and be like you know what let's just ship one good steam game everybody makes five million and we're good to go and they have success like one of them is one of the games in this category is Liars bar first game from the team boom they made like 15 off the bat done but again like cohorted basis what percentage of those teams can actually hit those things I I get just just watch Eric just watch Eric there you go yeah it's a thing it's a thing with good devs they're like you know

what one Mr cfop I want to strangle you right now luckily we continents apart every nice thing I said about you which is not much I'm taking it all back God damn it that's your prog stop throwing that [ __ ] Juju out there dude yeah don't yeah I'll be [ __ ] anyway make fun games people make fun games it's fine even not about no even if they're fun Mone it's Roi Dallas I'm going to move us along here number six and this is this is basically a three-way tie for the most questionable move so currently the slight Edge goes to 34% is Netflix number two not at 32% is gaming VC pouring money into all of the ex you know blizzard Riot BN you know big company devs and number three at 28% is supercell

launchers without a soft launch this is your veto right chis this is it this has to be the one well I don't know the veto is so much of like we got to tip the scale maybe no abute formula Adam's formula VC's wasted the most amount of money therefore that's the People's Choice right I think I think that was mine in this one like in this case I don't know like Netflix obviously we can get into but on gaming VCS like at the time like I'm think like questionable has to be given the information they had at that time wasn't the right decision to make to invest in those companies and I still believe that like investing in X teams from blizzard and Riot and big companies that have seen zero to one some of the biggest franchises you should invest in those types of teams no Chris is gonna argue with that like B way so we got bonfire we got zero to one that's the one no stop stop stop talking for a moment no this is exactly the point is that these people from Riot as amazing as they may be do not know how

to run a gaming company right running a gaming company is asset allocation you know it is like it is like funding different groups and and it's not some low-level producer on League of Legends that goes out there and starts like building a team to create games like making games is a lot harder than that and that's what the VCS never understood or still don't understand for that matter right but that's not super vies team as an example right that was the entire like League of Legends leadership team lead team yeah that was senior Executives do you do you disagree with a VC investment for a firm like that if we were to go back to Adam's Point who do you invest in if it's not with people with a proven track record on a successful game VC shouldn't invest in gaming that's the whole point wow that doesn't make sense that Ian look we're sorry we were specifically talking about Triple A right we're not talking about mobile mobile is a completely different animal and when it comes to this sort of thing I just want to be clear on that I think in this case you're right Crest where

it's the amount of risk that they have to take in order to do these types of bets that the blizzard Riot teams did where they had to what was it specu divide was 80 million super viive was roughly around 80 million those types of bets in this market that was wrong no it's insane all of it's insane and there's not been one success story yeah but now we know that at that time no no but okay okay I mean I was saying it at the time we were saying it based on the amount of money being put in that's saying that like hey this is not enough in order to properly publish and to go after the ambition that they're going for in order to actually succeed in PC console you're G to need more money than this you no okay that's true but then again like the whole well okay this is the whole com conversation about why VC doesn't make sense in gaming and I don't want to go through it in PC gaming in in in Triple A yeah but do we think okay so let's just go to this do we think Netflix was a bigger questionable move than the other two I think the problem is that Netflix were only talking about the the

money they just [ __ ] burned on GTA but how about all the other money they burned on [ __ ] right so like collectively I think Netflix wins this category full stop like in terms of the amount of money spent and the misalignment of strategy or lack of strategy so for me it's Netflix is is the winner although VCS are close second which is ironic because that's exactly what that's how it's yeah so yeah this is a tossup for me dude I mean because Netflix felt the pain now right BCS won't feel the pain for years and it will never be really reported right I don't think because they can hide behind [ __ ] right they are feeling the pain when they're raising their next funds because they have to report on okay so you want a new new round new fund and what did you do between let's say 2020 like you have those numbers they're public they have to show that no but they are doing their Valu of their portfolios I don't there's no independent source of like a publicly

traded yeah and so like it's all self-reported of [ __ ] right well let's let's put it this way there's not a lot of markups happening like the value is not increasing for those companies yeah they they should be like a quarter of what theyve invested in right or L their Investments are zero like fundamentally right except that they they can't report that right they report some nonsense right I think we picked on Netflix enough let's just [ __ ] wh on the VCS well that and we didn't even po supercell and Squad Busters I think if we did a mobile specific disappointing move launching Squad Busters without a soft launch or like a longer soft launch would probably win with a lot of our audience on that side of things but in any event all right so Netflix wins that one say I'll say Netflix I'll about yeah number seven most brilliant move oh my God we're finally gonna talk about something positive so this is also a a toss up with a bunch of things but the leader at 30% is Disney and epic deal

which somebody in the comments gave me [ __ ] for but so this one is kind of leading number two at 23% was MTG buys clam so makers of Rage Shadow Legends so that's number two and number three is what hyper casual publish we do hyper casual pubs going to hybrid casual that's going to hybrid Cas yes yes you are correct surviving what what do you guys think do you want to put your thumb on the scale on this one since it's pretty close I don't actually understand why Disney Epic is brilliant yeah neither do I sorry the total brand [ __ ] just like throw your IP at like a platform I will say this like fortnite creative had a little bit of growth spurt at the end of the year I don't know if anyone's been following that which restored some faith that I was starting to lose an epic I did learn that they're pretty anti- AI over the holidays which I'm not a big fan of if that is the case internally like Tim Tim Sweeney should be like a pretty Progressive thinker on this and if he's really anti-i that would be that'd be disappointing that'd be disappointing

that's really going to hold him back and I think a meaningful way that isn't certainly holding back roblocks they embracing it with full arms it was a 1.58 million I forgot exactly anyway sure but still like just to get Disney in more fortnite experiences like Marvel Star Wars and Marvel my friend yeah but Adam cont why because Disney Infinity they'll never give up on Disney Infinity it'll never die okay okay the context here was twofold one is that epic needs to build a platform and they basically got the best IP in the planet for getting an investment right yes yeah they got paid the best sorry I I guess I'm interpreting it as a brilliant move for Disney but you're saying no it's a brilliant move for epic should rever it's for both I think yeah hold on I'm not done I'm not done so the second part was that Disney was on its [ __ ] ass because they destroyed every franchise

that they have in their entire Arsenal and he did this deal in order to get more exposure to actually stuff that's growing within in the entertainment space and this looked really good for him as well and the stock of Disney we rebounded because of this deal right it was a brilliant move know that's good that's good context thank you yes both people benefited at a corporate level from players like you know chush just said you're you're going to get two of the biggest IPS on the planet which already have had success on the platform anyway all right we're going to keep going uh crushed it so what crushed it this one look well there's two kind of close but at 43% it's brawl Stars brawl stars live Ops and IP collaborations is seems to be the winner number two is applen who their stock surged over 7 140% in 2024 I think I picked Apple because they just as a corporate level just was like holy [ __ ] we've never seen them go that big so thoughts on these

two makes sense to me yeah it totally makes sense to me but it's just so ironic that they can have one of the best crushing it moves in the industry and then also do this and in the same exact Year have a disaster that is Squad Busters like it is like what is going on over there it's like totally the very independent cells of decision making but doesn't this make it make it seem not as bad Eric right isn't this just mean like look at they took a swing you know maybe it was 100 million down the drain but brawl star's growth just totally overcomes this like now they have a stream of payments that they can go out and they experiment with and Squad Busters is just an experiment that didn't work out so pick your chin up and like take your next shot at Moco or this other Rogue light game I would say it's more like a hubris of like hey look we can turn around any game so let's just throw it out there look brawl Stars took its time you know and it only now it's flying high so it doesn't matter like stop killing games and soft L you just put it out and just make it work because

we can do it I think that's more likely it yeah and at the time I remember saying specifically it's like they didn't need to do it right because brawl star was doing so well why would they try to like like push something out that wasn't ready it's like it was Hubris I don't think they knew that as much like you have to remember that Squad Busters could have vaulted them to their record Revenue year because remember the main story line is that Clash Royale is down that is what has hurt their overall portfolio Revenue the most and brawl star has really been filling in that ditch exactly but that that was a huge ditch to fill in like when you go back and look at crash royale's numbers they are [ __ ] insane how much money that game made up front and the decline is even more astonishing that has been their number one priority and if they couldn't have done that Squad Busters could have stacked on top of brawl stars and now it's like IPO let's [ __ ] go Moco next which is at least my bet I hope Moco comes out like that is a really great narrative to your point Eric you know pad into IPO about it didn't work out but they took their shot

they took their shot you know 50 million million they knew the metrics they I mean they they they're smart enough to know that this thing wasn't tracking I could see you could see it that's fair that's fair so take the lesson take the lesson and move on right I think they do need to kill itad we're going to keep going number nine is layoff low lights so we joke that we actually named this the embracer award because I think they've won it in the past and oh look again with 55% embracer takes it again not so close second at 32% 31% is Microsoft Microsoft had those two rounds of layoffs that were pretty pretty bad so I I don't think we can argue with that and then number 10 is Mishka knew the limping donkey award so this is a unicorn company only on paper it looks like the leader in this with 35% is forte number two is improbable yeah yeah prob they're they're they are

friends so I can't mention any of this but every time I mention Forte like so many people reach out who have worked or are working at the company and they are saddled with all kinds of documentation for them to keep their mouth shut it doesn't come from nowhere but this company is very interesting I wonder what's going to happen down the line but of course they have a lot of great investors so they don't want to they don't want to you know they don't want to cut down the evaluation of this $1 billion doll baby so what it is so there there you go Forte takes the prize on that and that wraps up the golden Twigs Mishka will make our golden twig we actually have an award that we actually hand you in person whenever we see you although I don't know if any of the Netflix people are ever going to take anything from us I feel so bad why they they are smart people were getting extremely well compensated good on them like we're not hating on on those like the strategy was what it was but everybody got paid so what what are we you know angry about like we're talking

about over million salary from most of the people at least what I know so let's let's relax a little bit it's not punching down so yeah I I have to actually reach out to Mike Verdo who probably hates me at this point but I will be able to hand him the uh the award if he'll he'll see he'll him we'll see you I love you Mike also on the award form we had an open-ended question of you know just give us some comments so I picked a few to read out if you guys want to you I don't know what you think if there's something that you saw that was interesting so do is Simply the Best you make the week better thanks for all the hard work that goes into the experience you got you guys being together are like the Top Gear of games wow and with cr's new Porsche on the way I really thought I really thought that was appropriate speaking of punching up we here's like a little bit of a criticism it's only fun to punch up and it it is always a good idea to think

hard about the direction of a punch before you throw it so you know I think we should a little bit of feedback fire and forget baby that was Gabe bladen's advice is it really fire a little salute emoji and I was like all right that's all right there you go leave your truth D that guy's ruthless man here's some more there are many great gaming podcasts but yours is still the most fun to listen to which is good we try to be you know that's why Crest picks aside thanks for being a fun podcast keep making terrible takes me and my friends love going back to episodes and finding them so they love that we take aide in a wrong Phil Phil how do you do a brawl stars on Clash Royale did I say this you did like it's like a like it's a verb I don't know like you shape u-shape maybe like that that this is somewhat of a u- shape like remember remember that graph that they had with Frank has D30 retention going big big number up that was that was cool

like do that all right I thought this one was fun as a Ubisoft employee even after all the hate you guys make me come back all the time as a first-timer podcast listener you definitely make my Sunday morning house cleaning routine way more enjoyable I love the different personas you guys created the drama all the learning I've been getting into this Market been loving it so far so I wouldn't change anything it'd be cool to have debates about about a specific Trend PC versus console or mobile game versus mobile app Ubisoft versus the community to get different views so that was fun Adam Adam don't you have a podcast coming out you mean like the shooter one when when when are you going to post that I think we recorded you're supposed to promo Adam just you're supposed to Terri I'm Mr monochrome there you go Mr monotone is not a very good Shiller so yeah well I mean the the other podcast you did by the way tons of positive feedback you are you're a good host I think this PVE podcast is going to be great oh yeah

they actually learned something from you you know it's like the final one I have is it's really valuable and I love the cheeky tone you take with the twig and the newsletter so I like this one you forgot the most fun one right I will pay top dollar for M calendar to hang in my office where can I get one which where where is it where take it off M that's all they want dude want see it where where did you see this it's in the list it's in the list I like list I put them all in here all right so thank you for everyone who wrote in there's a ton more comments but I I just I tried to pick a few out appreciate that all right everybody thank you for hanging in there for the golden twigs and we'll see you next week we'll get into some philosophical topics with Mr Telfer it'll be like I imagine like a a smoking jacket and a cigar and a little like a little glass of something and we're GNA hey Adam can you can you do us a favor

and and summarize the ball thing because I just can't possibly go through and I'll use the AI to summarize the whole thing yeah use AI to summarize it and send it to me because I'm I can't do it that guy is just like so annoying annoyingly thorough 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 in 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 industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com and apply to join dur the games industry best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fun content creators thanks for listening

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