TWIG #315 TikTok Ban and Matthew Ball's State of the Market Report

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to deconstructor of funds this weekend games twig 317 where we give you our game industry Insider takes on the top gaming news stories each and every week I'm Jen Doo I fill the marketing and Publishing role on The Twig team today we don't have Philip black but we do have Eric Crest head of strategy and investing Adam teler product guy at product guy Lord and Laura Fran to product girl at products girl the puzzle queen as we like to call you here's what we got going on in the episode today the latest on the Tik Tok and Marvel snap roller coaster shutdowns backup shutdowns what's going on there anap Perna gets a new head of games from Netflix and then we're going to probably spend most of our time on Matthew Ball

State of games 2025 another state of games is out today which is from censor Tower so I haven't had time to digest that so maybe that's next week's topic is going into that so first I just wanted to see TV is fantastic Adam I know you're too busy playing games but tell me you guys are watching sance on Apple TV the most original Mystery Box show I've seen a long time they actually give homages to like old school PC gaming in it if you're a fan anyone watching this yeah I actually have time for this this is good I like it I have no I have no [ __ ] idea what's going on right now at this [ __ ] show it's really I I should have watched the whole the first season all all over again it did do the recap at the start of the second season and I there was so much things you have to watch the whole yeah you really do there's just so many threads that I totally forgot about well so to Market I the reason why I'm

bringing this up number one is I'm a nerd about it number two is the marketing for season 2 is Stellar they did this at Grand Central Station in New York they set up this Cube and they had all of the actors show up like they were going to work and so basically it was like a fishbowl of you watching the Seance workers they were actually at their computers you know doing all of the things so and it was all of the cast like Patricia arette Adam scottt all of them so dear marketer I do think that there's something that we might be able to take from what Apple TV plus is doing for marketing these kind of stunt events can actually still work in today's world if you set it up and you Market it right and you make sure you've got all the social behind it they did something similar with Silo which is the other great Apple TV show that just ended highly recommend that so what kpis did this increase yeah exact channeling my channeling my in Phil immediately I I think she I think she's only mentioning this because Phil's not here and so he can't throw up oh she can get away with

it okay yeah but like as a stunt thing like how do you actually leverage a stunt event to mean improve marketing kpi the Press did you see the press and the Impressions all of that came out metric okay it's like pissing away money not vanity so so yeah the New York Times editor came out wow fabulous he'll she Lots she'll watch the show I challenge you to Google how much press this got it was it was pretty stellar the amount if if Google Trends did a huge Spike because of this event totally I could buy that you start to drive serious awareness it's a bunch of organic interest but did it that's what I want to know so this was a major event that everyone showed up for I don't have I mean I don't know if Apple TV released any of the the metrics for the first season or the first episode oh CR is yes yeah yes I love you dearly right honestly but marketing people love to talk about these type of things because

this is what keeps them going you know these creative things the thing that they were doing at EA that was really were really cool right but they just are not Material they have no material impact on what's happening with these things at all like it's just fun I disagree agree I disagree that breaking into the zeist no one knew what Severance was until they started to go into season 2 and really put a lot of money behind it now everyone it's like the buzz of of the shows right now but in the case of the opportunity cost of a event like that versus spending more on digital where you could see more tracking and more attributable actual kpis yes yeah right like like as a marketer could you have spent more on digital spend and gotten further measurable audience or was this actually a better use of that it's an and it's not or like so what I what I hate is that you can't just do UA budgets are night right so it is an or Philip is

going to lose his goddamn mind listen to this thing you cannot just do pump out UA and O only expect that to be success you need to take risks you need to do different things try to break through the zeit guys try to do something different I don't understand why like very little money if it's not measurable it's not worth doing so there we go Moving on but like if I think of the med model of this show right right like the media mix model of this show did this show up I'd love like I'm not like pushing back against it because I would love to see those numbers to say yes this numbers there are no numbers there's never numbers for this type of thing there aren't numbers but all right we're I'm gonna just close this out because we always fight about this and and my point of view is you just can't do UA you need a mix of things like listen you have to be reasonable about how much you spent on something like

this they made a box in Grand Central Station and had the cash show up for 15 minutes and it got everywhere seems like a pretty good Roi for the amount of Impressions and awareness that they got through PR okay all right so let's go to Shilling Mishka said that the supper club that he keeps promoting that people couldn't get into because he only had a few spots was an A plus of course it was these supper clubs are awesome we're actually going to be doing more hopefully one in La coming up soon we also released three more predictions for 2025 mobile marketing by John Wright m&a by invest games and for the first time ever app predictions by VIN s because I don't think there's any possible way for me to pronounce Vin's last name he's ex Zinga PM turn Reddit dop all right so another shill I just did a podcast with Alex teay apologies to some of you we had a little edit issues so it's all fixed now go watch on

YouTube go listen on your podcast of choice really fun conversation she's a podcast host at NAIC and she's also over at Ruckus now it's great to get the next generation of game voices out and to hear her story from blizzard to bit craft to Ruckus like she's done more in her career I think than I did in like five minutes like she's a rock star and a huge fan of deconstructor of fun crushy says hi yeah she never stops she doesn't like energize her bunny on crack finally my last shill is at GDC this is kind of a public service announcement to save the date so Stan from beta hat will be three peating h sponsoring a pregame get together the Sunday before GDC starts this is on March 16th so please book your hotel and flights early come join us we do have a location called the Southside Spirit house so new location this year and details will come so save the date March 16th any corrections folks

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from Indie creators to Global Giants trust sensor Tower to help them win so why not you start your free trial today at sensor to.com that is sensor [Music] to.com all right so I'm gonna keep going Laura do you actually do you want to talk about the switch too super excited well I I feel like this isn't new at all cuz the leak that happened however many months ago for me was the announcement the things that stuck out to me were two one they're getting rid of that slide and snap and there it looks like it's going to be magnetic joycon controllers which is great I'm excited for that and I believe if I looked at the video correctly they're switching the location of the charging cable yes it's going to go on top thank God because there's nothing worse than you put it up to play it's dying and then you have this thing coming out the bottom so you can't actually you can't actually rest it any where because you have this cord coming

out so to excited about those two we already knew it was going to be backwards compatible in most cases I think they're upgrading the this is touching on the Matthew ball presentation a bit but I think they're upgrading the GPU and there some of the the ships getting upgraded so it's going to be a bit more powerful I don't think it's going to be you know PS5 and a Nintendo Hardware but it's I'm excited I'm G to buy one let's just let's just call spade a spade I'm definitely going to get one I think the really no surprises here I think people were a little bit disappointed there wasn't as many specs announced but I don't think Nintendo really gives a [ __ ] about specs and the people that need to know the specs know the specs which are the developers but there are no software announc I mean they they showcase some Mario Kart I guess on the announcement on the device but nothing nothing else but again they confirmed all the things that we've been say well I've been saying for the last like two years is that you know this is basically an iPhone model where it's just an upgraded version of the switch with better components bigger screen clearly a

bigger device based the same functionality which makes shareholders happy because there's less risk of not being successful this was definitely the least exciting Nintendo announcement ever like everything was just oh immediately checklist we've already done stuff move past yeah they just threw out a trailer they're like here you go here's a trailer and the sucky part is they said that they are not really talking about it until April now right yeah that was Dire yeah yeah I direct in April which that's fine right we'll see oh they also GTA on another announc GTA there is definitely rumors that there's a trailer coming for a GTA in the next week or so do we think they're still on track for fall 25 impossible to know what I do know is they're still gutting for it but there's still risk but the fact that they're throwing out a trailer would be a good indication got it okay so the other big news this weekend especially in the US well primarily in the US was

that Tik Tock and therefore also Marvel snap went down and went dark so if you're if you're not familiar with the whole situation on January 18 Tik Tok and other bite dance own apps including Marvel snap were removed from the US app stores due to a federal band targeting bite dance this led to a two-day outage for Marvel snap during which players were unable to access the game as of January 21st Marvel snap is back online in the US although it remains unavailable to download on the App Store in the Google Play Store by the way this is true for also the moonton games so yeah mobile Legends bang bang is also hurt by this as well because remember I don't know if you're remember actually bite dance works with them or bought them so to prevent future disruptions developer second dinner plans to bring more services inhouse and partner with a new public so Ben bro did a tweet that actually I

think this was a blue sky post not tweet but you know same idea W Marvel snap is back online in the US but make sure that this never happens again we're working to bring more services in the house and partner with a new publisher this is start of a new era for Marvel snap ironically okay maybe not ironically at all the head of marketing Alan posted a job opening for director of growth if I saw that if you're interested go on our jobs Channel and check it out or go on LinkedIn so this this is just a fascinating F I feel so bad for Marvel snap just the splash damage on them from the whole thing was kind of sad there was a scream that came out of my daughter when it went down like literally I could hear it AC was crazy right so I I I live through the pain I suppose but I don't want to get political on this but it doesn't seem that Trump really has the authority to do what he did like this has been legislated again

like the Senate approved this thing so it's not over right I didn't know that you actually can't download both Tik Tok or Marvel snap from the store ultimately that likely will make it break it's really fascinating it it's fascinating it is painful when there needs to be an update right so if you have it the service is live but if there needs to be an update yeah yeah you're screwed Apple Google are not putting themselves out there and risking anything right at this point nope I don't think they particularly like Tik Tok either right really well the findes were insane I if I remember correctly reading about it it was like for every user that is not in compliance it was like $5,000 per user per something or other so it's 150 million users it's kind of pricey yeah yeah the the other fun interesting talk is what happens to all of Tik tok's ad Revenue which is like I don't know between 15 and 23 million dollars a year and so you

know Zucker Brook's over there you know and this you know who wait what's the snap guy they're all like Evan we go they're all like oh we'll take some of that ad Revenue so if you're again if you're in games marketing right now you're also hurting because anything you had on Tik Tok you had to reallocate and try to go to meta try to go to you know the other folks so again Apple oven's probably loving this they should do more Grand Central events all that Tik to they should solve all their problems [ __ ] yes I'm glad I got you on board Adam all right Leanne Loom the exhe head of Netflix games third party start okay gotcha yeah she landed very quickly at annaa games in which she is now the head of games it feels like most likely this was put into motion a while ago so they she clearly knew that things were not going well at Netflix for her aner games basically focuses on Indie type games so it feels like a pretty

good fit given her background I don't know Anna puner pictures created like her which I really like that one that movie The Master Zero Dark 30 and kind of the interactive division focuses on the same type of Indie style games with their artistic Focus right so some of the games that they've done before which I've never heard of any of these except for outou of Wilds frankly but Edith Finch outer wild stray the PC Port of Journey and neon white so clearly smaller Indie style games so I wish her the best of luck right with her new Venture maybe product strategy is gonna make more sense at intera than it did at Netflix so so so is this the team that basically had to had the layoffs or the major restructuring in September and then they rebuilt now now they're rebuilding underly yeah there's a there was a lot of drama I know that this is the the heavy heavy drama that happened then September where the entire team

quit and left and so yeah there's a lot of rebuilding going on there yeah this seems like a rebuild operation especially like unfortunately coming out of the difficulty of Netflix and then going to a rebuild at anera I knew there was something about this but but do they still have any teams to make games or well it's all like publishing so it's working with you know second and third party but the publishing team is is what some of those folks I mean I don't know all the details so I probably shouldn't talk too much but I think some of them either came back or they were rebuilding the publishing team okay gotcha so yeah anaer is a a publishing organization that works with the third party second maybe some second but a lot of third party folks it's an interactive division of a company that's focused on making movies right so yes that is n necessarily a good place to be as a game

this is very much like an indie publisher right like yeah Indie movies Indie publisher yeah correct and then what they're trying to do as well is take some of the the IP and license it on the entertainment side and so it's actually run by Megan Ellison of Ellison Fame so another oh so some super rich girls like starting her like Pet Project oh that that's not a good sign either she's had it for a while you mean Larry Ellison's daughter oh yeah she yeah I've heard lots of stories about her she grew up in San Francisco she's a she's a piece of work oh okay but what I wanted to ask you is almost shifting gears to our favorite topic of Netflix so did you see the earnings report yesterday where they crushed it they're up like stock is up like 12% and they actually came out and said a little bit about the future of Netflix games so our our buddy nil long from mobile Gam Biz did an article this

morning it was great so let me just actually read some of it to you Netflix has stated that it's refining in in quotes refining its games offering by focusing on narrative party kids and non IP games as it pushes more into tv-based cloud gaming as part of its blowout Q4 earnings Netflix said that squid games Unleashed is unpaced to be its most downloaded game to date this you know it's what we've been talking about it's what we've been saying narrative games work for them oh I want to go back I wish I had the time to go back and pull me pitching kids in Netflix like last year or something I'm like why aren't they doing kids yeah but like what size of business is this I don't want to want to spiral on this not size of business is this dude this makes total sense though what the [ __ ] are they doing all this small okay but I mean look I mean it's

like percentages of of people staying on the service you know like this is like this is staying in your lane like what the [ __ ] were they doing doing $50 million download games in Triple A like yeah let's double down on that this is the right strategy it might be a smaller lift but it's in their Lane they can execute on this I like they can and they and they well I don't know if they will but they can yeah so they actually labeled flick stocka buy like it I don't know it shot uh but let's pivot to something I actually have a question maybe they're not in their Lane I don't know Laura what do you think talk to us about Candy Crush solitire oh trying I'm trying to think of an answer if are they in their Lane maybe not but I don't think they should stay in their Lane I think this is a good move for them I don't so way back when in the however long ago we had covered Candy Crush IP kind of ranching out into different types of games so they had taken basically a skeleton meta and started

experimenting with different cores and they they had a couple soft launch or beta tests and one was Candy Crush 3D Candy Crush blast candy and then Candy Crush solitire well it looks like of those three Candy Crush Solitaire is going for worldwide release February 6th it's been in tests for about a year and it's interesting I mean yeah are they my first question is this isn't the first company that has started branching out into solitire that's more more of an interesting question for me so what is drawing people to the solitire space because it's not it's not like a major player in the Casual space when I looked at it overall by downloads and revenue compared to like match and some of the larger well those the super saturated cores I mean it's like less than 1% of downloads and 2% of Revenue of the Casual Market as of all of 2024 so it's small and I had to look at what the revenue change over time was so year over year it was it was growing from 2007 to 2023 but then it's kind of been

shrinking over the last year I feel like there's two things that this people think about they're like okay wow we can this is an opportunity we if we can go and create a new offering for the solitire market there's appetite there's some demand there's people or it scares people off it looks like here people are getting excited and they're like oh this is this is an area I can actually dig into I say there's two big players one is Tiki which GSN made that scope Le Acquired and the other I mean the biggest game in soliter is play tika's Grand Harvest I mean that's kind of mopping the floor with the rest that was actually an acquisition in 2018 of supertreat which was the original developer of grand Harvest but why I think this is interesting is like you have I don't know if you all have seen but metacore is planning to release Grandma's solitire secrets so metacore I mean so Those ads on Tik Tok I mean the problem with that is I watched that I'm like oh this must be a new anime show or

something or a new cartoon show no it's just really good ads and the other one is play is came out with fishdom solitire too so I feel like there's some Secret Sauce here that people think they have that it's drawing kind of these these big players in the Casual space to be like we need to make a solitary game but what what do you think has capped the solitary space and the past that people think now they can grow past it I am not sure so I played I I played Grand Harvest and I played a little bit of tiki I do not know solit as well as I know Match 3 there's not huge waves of differentiation I've seen at least between Grand Harvest and for example the Candy Crush because I I thought the version would have come out with something entirely different full disclosure they did not release in the US or Australia so I have not been able to play the game I've been like watching YouTube videos but they're very similar so I thought it would have come out with another like something a little bit different they put kind of like the the charm you find in Candy Crush from

everything like the little the obstacles and the the boosters and kind of that that King gameplay charm that you would expect that's all in there they have events that all makes sense but I haven't either I haven't watched enough videos yet or I haven't seen anything that's sweepingly different from what's in the market so far so it's kind of a question mark for me but it's just the beginning right so we'll see what they come out with yeah I'd love to try to figure out how to answer that question because it just seems so odd to me that there's been this growth of a number of different genres in the Casual space like gen match Factory being like is this really the next thing is is mixing and sorting now with magic sort the new thing is solitire the new thing and even for Candy Crush like they obviously did not succeed with Candy Crush going and replicating itself within match three why go to these significantly smaller subg genres and what do they see that could see make these sub genres all of a sudden expl obviously we've seen it like merge 2 is

popping off right now right so it's not like genres are set in stone and they never move but somebody's got to have a a good idea of how to break these sub genres open but see if you're GNA break the sub genre open I would come with a completely different offering that's that's the part that is a question mark for me because so far the game play is very similar of what already exists the only other thing I found and I think this is relatively small but everyone's talking about it's a new game yes I'm super excited love new games what's been a little bit more on the quiet is they're actually launching in alternative native app stores so it's available what on Amazon app store Samsung Galaxy store H app gallery that's strategy is our strategy I was like maybe that's a shotgun blast what is that okay that's just well I mean that's A tes testimony to the demographic right the 60-year-old lady that still owns [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] Kindle Fire from

like 10 years ago exactly all right my hot take on this is what couple things one is that there are a [ __ ] ton of Solitaire games out there right and none of them made any money really over the years with the exception of the two that I think have been mentioned is the soliter grand Harvest and the tri Peaks game the tiki solare like all the rest are complete trash in terms of monetization like I think they do decently and I think they're all ads based right most of them right so they're probably making some decent money on ads on the revenue per install like they're insane whatever they do in Grand Harvest is is great but the rest of them don't make that much money no but anyway there's a lot of AD stuff going on as well which I think makes sense for a game like soliter and then the beta on this game if you actually look at the Canada and the Germany numbers it's not great honestly it's good but I think actually their puzzle games monetize a [ __ ] ton better right but it's good enough enough I think for Candy Crush brand to scale it but I

don't know if it's really good enough to scale outside of Candy Crush my point is if they could replica what Grant Harvest has done from a perspective of monetization this is going to be a home run for them but otherwise there's really no other good comps out there in terms of actually making money that's even closely material to the king group right so the Assumption here has to be that CPI is significantly lower in the space it can grow right that's what how much SC think it you can't you can't look even with Candy Crush brand dude you can't scale a game that makes only I think it's 60 Cent RPI right Revenue PR install it's just impossible you know and these are these are tier one type countries where I wanted to pop in on that was exactly where you're going Adam which is the cpis so what I'm worried about for them is Solitaire is a commodity it's everywhere there are free versions it's on you know all the subscription platforms but the thing that we worries me for them is there's a ton of pay for cash versions of soliter

and when you think about that Social Casino kind of version of the game play and again you're targeting almost a very similar player and consumer why wouldn't you do the play for cash version and then King has to compete with ad space with those kinds of games for a very similar gameplay so I'm worried crash to your point with a low Revenue per download a low arpo might be high cpis but I don't know they're coming they're launching it so they must see something that we don't see I just worry about it scaling I worry about the long-term effect of that's always a bad Omen when on this podcast we're like they must see something we don't see and then all of a sudden they launch and they like oh wait no they saw it yeah like the supercell game yeah the Pay to Win apps I cannot figure out how they work because I downloaded one they're all over Tik Tok I don't know if you've been on Tik Tok but it's every three videos Almost is an ad and I would say every 10 videos is an

ad for real cash solitire Bingo whatever games oh yeah yeah yep I I downloaded one they actually take the credit card in the app and I can't figure out how they bypass the they must not pay the 30% fee like I don't understand how that how it works or how they're able literally you put your credit card in I didn't actually do it I was worried something would happen but I don't know how they're just going around like they found a loophole they found a loophole no I think that's because Apple and Google don't want anything to do with those game those games they don't want to be responsible they don't even review them when they go on the store no at one of these apps flyer dinners I was sitting next to a guy from Fanatics who does the shirts but they also have a whole division that does like a FanDuel or something and Brian Murphy came over who is the the abser guy and he's like Jen you don't even know the hell that is this side of gaming this you know to play or play to win cash side of gaming

so maybe that's a podcast I'll do later on is go into this because I'm I'm a little bit fascinated but it I just feel dirty I feel I feel gross the best parties at GDC that's always that's the part that scares me it's like skills like yeah yeah this this this play for cash [ __ ] it's dirty dirty business it's worse than the scums at the casinos you know it's like it's bad it's really bad sorry guys I was out there yeah not that is like the low of the low all right let's keep going bonfire Studios chis what happened yeah so bonfire Studios after eight years finally Rob parau who is lead designer of wow has announced that their game is going into early Alpha they've done friends and family for a while I actually read through the press release and they would not be very specific on what this game actually is it's a multiplayer action game we know but we just was like he was being very odd

about describing it so he basically said it was like a unique combat style it wasn't a shooter but it wasn't a pointand click and they built it for the controller from the beginning that actually is very very smart and again they've been doing friends and family testing up to this point but they're opening it up to a broader audience of which I signed up if you guys don't know what this company is it was founded in 2016 and then it was funded by a16z and riot in 2018 for cool 25 mil my sense is that they will likely are announcing this to get more money in order to publish this game if I were to guess and to also finish this game again to be clear this is a terrible BC investment a full stop like a16z is not gonna make any money on this just to be clear I want have to iterate that it makes actually a lot of sense for strategic like Riot they could help publish it but I don't think they're going to be publishing it I'm not really too sure yeah I don't think Riot's in that game anymore see above lean Loom and Riot

Forge and where yeah right I forgot to mention that where that went well ironic yeah actually this comes full circle because Leanne was actually part responsible for the third party publishing arm at Riot where they were leveraging their IPs and hiring third party second party teams to build games for that and that was shut down yes in 20124 oh yeah last year yeah it was called Riot Forge yes Riot Forge correct so anywh who I am excited to see what Roberto comes out with after all this time that's a long [ __ ] time how does he make a game that big with 25 million in eight years I think they only have like 60 or 70 people okay there no fre small team yeah they're all loaded I'm sure because of the early wow days so perhaps they're not you know everyone's just not getting paid everyone gets paid hair a labor of love dude labor of love wow he years of Love is a lot I don't

know I could call some people and get some more color as to what's going on down there but I don't want to throw shade sadly I don't know if there's a game that's been in development for multiple years like that that has seen success you know I'm thinking of Concord I'm thinking of you know a lot of these these folks just you know and we'll talk about it in the Matthew ball thing I just the world has evolved in the last it has like exponentially evolved and if you were caught in the middle of this I think it's going to be tough for you because play is so different now anyway let's go to Hugh on the bad news huge games Cuts 29% of its Workforce that is quite a bit of people about 122 for them this is the Polish based mobile game developer and unfortunately they shut down their Netherlands and Finland Studios which you know sorry to the fins this has been a tumultuous time for huge to say the least but this is kind of it looks like hopefully this will be the end of it and they'll come back more

stronger who knows but pretty sad I hope we are not on track to grow layoffs this year but no I don't think so yeah it was 14,000 I think is last year so let's let's hope hope that it's less okay let's get into our big topic that Adam more positive is it is it positive okay let's get into Matthew ball stve of the market I guess wait for the record I want to bring Matthew ball back from the 2021 days where he was [ __ ] bullish as [ __ ] and he was like pontificating nonsense around the world you know I want to bring that guy back not this guy this guy's an [ __ ] you know what I'm saying like what do you mean [ __ ] I think he's basically the same as us same level I understand no he's an [ __ ] just like me but like he was such a nice guy before and now what's changed it it was only like a couple years ago what happened Mr ball same let go see what

happened to the industry over the last few years that has changed his perspective the crazy thing was it was 220 slides oh my God this was so much so much information he doesn't understand brevity at all him and him and yast yast yeah and it's very it's very like one graph one slide here's your bullets move forward type of of structure right but it was amazing like here's all 220 slides on the screen right now before we go into fullon criticism mode and argue over the details it is important for us to say that this was amazing work being able to pull together all these data points together yeah weave together a narrative that we've all felt and we are going to criticize in terms of the level of calibration of pessimism versus optimism but it's very very impressive work the way that he also bucketed some of the the insights I thought was really incredibly well done to kind of

pull all of those things together where he bucketed like hey here's why everything was successful mobile freeo play Live service crossplatform Battle Royale battle pass ugc social gaming social game Services covid boost like all of these things were happening at once so obviously we could see some pretty amazing grow he was like wo and then he does a good job of however here's all the [ __ ] that's coming and I'm sure you're going to get into that sorry I probably stole your no but yeah that that is the key point of the article or of the PDF right is Gaming's meteoric rise has stalled the growth levers that we've seen work as you just listed over the last 10 years have all dried up and Matthew now argues that in order to see growth we need new ones he has some new ideas about what they could be and I think that's where Crest is going to flip the table if he hasn't already but specifically that also the assumption that it was all covid but this contraction that we've been feeling is co is in the whole story and goes

through a lot of the other different impacts that come from it why are you so pissed already here I'm I'm on like slide two this dude this dude said that the metaverse was going to be a multi-trillion dollar opportunity that would grow the gaming business beyond all recognition and now two years later he's coming up with this [ __ ] which is what I was saying two years ago Chris if we go back into your history have you ever made a bad prediction no you totally have if I go talk to Crest in 2009 what did he say with the mobile gaming industry I was always about grow why you talking about no no no no no on a market predictions I've actually been reasonably good I mean okay I'll admit that the mobile business has definitely gone gotten actually better than I expected quicker because of Apple's unwillingness to actually do anything about privacy because they don't really give a [ __ ] about privacy yeah but other than that like I no I think both we both agree Matthew ball

got his predictions wrong on the metaverse the guy should stay in his [ __ ] Lane dude he's a researcher research is this now predict predict don't predict research research reaches history that's it that's all he can do good is but what good is research if you're not making a prediction of what's to come because that's he doesn't understand gaming like he's not a gaming person at all right he's a researcher he's an intellect I do find it interesting when he's applying other Industries growth patterns and other learnings to gaming I find that correct especially with social video Tik Tok YouTube that is a different perspective than most of the analysts including ourselves would' be talking about okay fine yeah but again deck is amazing work if you haven't seen it yet please at least skim through it since the Data Insights are amazing my take overall here is that I think he's evaluating our current growth Le levers rather bleakly like very binary saying that they're completely in the [ __ ] rather than saying there's a bit more new resp to that and evaluating our future growth

levers with more positivity than I would associate with them so first let's kind of go through some really interesting points that I pulled out first one around like talking about that bleess of the current growth drivers believe that basically mobile is dead post idfa with all genres locked up which I just think is an overly Bleak perspective on mobile especially where we're actually seeing mobile actually opening up a little bit right now we should be a little bit more optimistic about Mobile versus where we were two years ago next was VR expectations I think this was my favorite graph because I I live in forecast land a lot and this is just such an an amazing perspective of like how people's exponential growth patterns have slowly come down over time you go Eric okay all right so this is funny because I actually tried to do this graph myself and I and I went down this rabbit hole for like hours trying to collect this information but no one keeps [ __ ] that is completely [ __ ] yeah public anymore right so I more

power to him that he found all this data to put this graph together but I want to say that Matthew ball was one of the reasons that these forecasts were completely out of the [ __ ] world right because he threw this thing out there and was like doing a [ __ ] World Tour presenting this [ __ ] about the metaverse and what it meant and that's how these VR type forecasts AR VR went to the moon right so he is like one was that in 2016 and 2017 he was already pushing I I mean the narrative was was getting pushed at that point right and so like I don't know how much he was involved then but he certainly was involved in 2020 and 2021 right where these forecasters were ridiculous ridiculous and I I was saying that then right and I was actually Throwing Shade at at at newu I don't even think they were even responsible for these [ __ ] predictions right so it's like how much responsibility does he have for the frothiness of this [ __ ] you know

like it never made sense then it never made sense then the day they announced what the VR was from Facebook it was never going to be what people suggested it was going to be right it was obvious even to the people at Facebook I like they even knew the other graph that was fun for me was that p&l from meta of just the deep red line going into ne6 billion spend every single year that was someone who does look at forast all the time and understands it's really really interesting when you see these these markets that everybody's bullish on and you just watch the forecast trying to keep that hockey stick where every single year that hockey stick just shifts a little bit to the right since we're kind of on this like fake forecast and Phil loves this stuff right like the Gathering of all of the the bad predictions so this was the same idea just applied to the overall industry and I'm glad that you pulled that the VR chart which looks a lot worse than this one but it's the same it's the same thing where you know the the growth

trajectory just we have to realize that even though we love all of these folks the newus the sensor Towers the Iggs you know everyone's still like making [ __ ] up and Crest I think you had a great point is when people are out there you know cheerleading one thing or the other that kind of gets these folks excited and then we all make our forecast and business projections based on it and then we are all like oh [ __ ] just one thing SC this is I this is IDC not idg I'm GNA I'm going to defend yoshio defend Yos that it's IDC Yos would never have thrown a forecast like this together that's [ __ ] that's IDC [ __ ] that's like the PWC guys that's like you know people that don't know [ __ ] about games that are writing this [ __ ] so I want to be clear Matthew ball wrote his book in 2022 2022 like that was like a couple years ago okay like like you know like and he was super bullish and the [ __ ] that he wrote about the metaverse was so ridiculous then I'll

read it to you if you want to hear it it's like unbelievable like how off he was and and the biggest thing is the interoperability [ __ ] which never was going to work but the economic potential of a multi-trillion dollar people he was out there at a16z he was out there at like conferences you know for Tech like he was just throwing this [ __ ] out there like it was true it was crazy dude and he was getting paid gillions of dollars like his rate card was so insane back then you know it's like d what are you talking about like I look I said it then I'm saying it now his predictions were ridiculous and like I don't know you can't just let him off the hook because he actually wrote an actually decent piece on this stuff you know so anyway whatever everyone got way too excited after seeing the Ready Player one movie and I feel like we've been so starved for new platforms and new new tech that it's just it's so exciting because it has promise and this is what it could be and I mean he said he said the metaverse was the next

internet the metaverse was the next internet what what are we talking about right I mean come on this whole book was predicated on this [ __ ] you know like come on this is ABS well to be fair in this version uh VR metaverse is like like a drop in the ocean I I I prefer I prefer this Matthew bald in two years ago I am glad that he has learned and I'm glad that he's still learning about the games industry I think this is [Music] good kickass live Ops need kickass tools that's where heroic Labs comes in they just released a massive update to their sator liveops platform and having done my research I can say with confidence that it's second to none in a single product you get everything you need including event capture player segmentation feature Flags remote configuration AB testing experiment ation live events calendar messaging retention grafing analytics and so much

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topics let's get off the this just amazing data Consolidated together being able to pull up data points that uh we knew existed but have like Fallen by the wayside right so great graphs on the consolidation of gen 9 versus gen 8 in terms of being down generation over generation on console that a large percentage of steam's growth has come from China we've talked about alone's podcast but being able to actually really see that and quantify that in graphs has been great to see the right in dominance of Chinese firms and I think the rising isolation of Apec markets so the data points from there 42% of worldwide spending growth since 2011 has gone to Chinese developers 80 to 85% of content spend in China is on Chinese made games which is growing from 60% in 2011 and that Chinese game companies are growing their outside of China revenue from less than a percent in 2011 to 133% I think that's the biggest Point yeah all signals that

China is just doing a great job I I've built slides that say exactly this it's actually even more egregious if you look at all of Asia even Japan and Korea it's like 85 to 95% of the revenue depending on the territory is from other Asian developers right yeah like us developers and European developers don't do [ __ ] all in Asia right it's not an open market both culturally as well as as economically for Western market so yes 100% agree with that sentiment well and now I I think the other big thing is they're coming here so Marvel Rivals and nettis you know Wukong you know black myth we're starting to see them figure out especially China figure out Western audiences we know Japan keep black myth black myth was still very much China black myth was very much China but Marvel Rivals has been a western success yes yes I mean I think it started the but the press that it got here and the focus that it got has been Paving the way for you know what we're seeing and

even in Mobile you know you know LT you're going to micro fun white out survival well then you got ginin and honai and AFK journey and you know you've got all of these other you know crests and they're they're your favorite right the gotcha games are the ones that are starting to get a lot more press here you know Century games that you said is it happy based in China is that right yeah I think the the number one the block blast is also block blast yep China based game so to me that is the oh [ __ ] moment is this the year where it it really really tips on midcore and core games versus just mobile Yep this is the year that a podcast gets started in China and that's where the real deconstructor of fund gets started right that now that's the cator exent not these Western people who think they can talk about the Chinese market we don't we don't know [ __ ] nope nope the next graph that I found really interesting was around costs on PC console just

quantifying that growth that we've been seeing and obviously with things like Call of Duty up there on top those were all in line with the type of Revenue and doubling down on building multiple games all within their one launcher but still you see that steady growth of development budgets for PC console and how dire that situation is the notion that this is a dire situation where it's costing so much to make games it's is a little bit over overblown right I think we were talking about a Jason shrier article recently that basically said the games c c cost too much to make right which is not really that true honestly right like it's like yeah they cost a lot of money to make but that's what the customer wants right and so so I think that's fine when Revenue comes in like that the problem has been the number of franchises that those costs are going up and the units are not growing at that same rate so you can't compete right so it's a mature

industry in which these big competitors are competing similarly to the movie industry you know where the budgets for like these [ __ ] Avengers movies was like2 200 to 400 million do right and like there's no one that can compete with that [ __ ] even water brothers can't compete with that [ __ ] you know but they were driving like a billion two and a half billion dollar in Revenue it's a [ __ ] great business right but but that doesn't mean that these movies cost too much to make right but so Call of Duty GTA baten FIFA all these large franchises are making money hand over fist with these huge budgets right so but I'm thinking more about the games that are underneath that level and then starting to say what is the right Dev budget in order to go after that opportunity what I'm saying is that these smaller developers no longer can compete with the customer wants you're basically saying like Sony and Microsoft can't comp like Spider-Man 2 and and Indiana Jones can't compete the only point I'll make is efficiencies around building those type of games yes those games have limited opportunity relative to these others but they should

be made in theory right should it be made with a 300 million dollar budget or 400 million no yeah right that's that's where like that's where the graph's going for many of those games if you filter it just to those single player games and I'm like that's not sustainable what I'm trying to argue here is from the customer perspective they could give a [ __ ] about how much of a game cost to make like you take an average fortnite player they're not complaining how much it costs to make a game or the average like 55y old lady playing you know Candy Crush they don't give a [ __ ] it how much it costs to acquire a customer right they're just spending money hand over fist is super profitable because they're great games and they own that business right and they're completely satisfied as a customer on this so I think the only people that are bitching and whining about cost of development are these pundits right that I don't know that are one Indies or something you know not sure I want Indies I just want these games to be successful like I want Spider 3 I want Spider-Man 4 I want Wolverine to be successful this business

is this business similar to what these the movies were at the time you know and you could have bitched and moaned about the fact that this Avenger movie is exactly the same as the last one it's just a big action Aventure with no plot and no no you know like whatever arguments you would make from the pundits but no one gives a [ __ ] everyone watch the movie right so it is what it is is what I'm trying to say yeah and I think let's go with that takeaway it is what it is no but we we talked about how some of that can be improved right you don't need to make a 60-hour experience you can make 20h hour experiences especially with the add that is our culture and you know everything else we have to do I I think there are ways to to trim that down in the right places because you still do need you know I didn't play Indiana Jones but I have heard lovely wonderful things about the experience you still need the Spider-Man's you still need those games but you you shouldn't be thinking about oh my God I have to compete with Call of Duty because that's not the right lens I

think is you have to find your audience and really do research and understand what is it that your audience has to have and then what is a nice to have and then you know do that and so maybe it's a 100 million and not 200 million and maybe you do it at a a a slightly lower price point we shouldn't be like ah we nobody can make anything anymore because players expect too much I mean look at what fortnite is it's a cartoon you know like people don't have to have the most they don't got a lot of content within fortnite is literally every game in one but yeah I agree I what I so I was looking at one of the early slides is what he considers kind of like the what he I think he called it like the greatest games content in a decade something like this and I was looking at some of his choice of titles and like honestly I don't need to see The Sweat Beads on some one's nose if it if it means like the story is going to be

garbage and I feel like that that balance I almost we put on ourselves that we have to have the this amazing looking High Fidelity perfect everything give me block characters and a good mechanic and a good narrative that would be that would be my make it cheaper I'm happy for cheaper it depends on the audience it depends on the audience you just have to figure out and really understand and this is where consumer insights comes into play and early early early play testing early early evaluation of your concept with your audience can really help okay continue on Mr next one more in terms of bleakness was around black hole games and this is one that nuu also talked about earlier on this year and it's the data point that roughly only 6.5% of playtime on PC console came from 2023 titles this is for 2023 and if you weren't Diablo 4 Hogwarts Bal gate or Starfield in reality all other games on the PC

console Market that were new and launched in 2023 were fighting over 3.4% share right which I think is like from my perspective is taking the most Bleak possible stat on the market when the reality is that many different business models don't actually rely on eating into playtime in order to be successful so most premium games actually if you look at it as a percentage of Revenue instead of a percentage of playtime still command a decent share it's not 3.4% like yes there continues to be black hole games and those players continue to operate them but those live service games still go out and buy a whole bunch of other games and are still successful when we look at all playtime yeah most of it's going to be sucked up by live services but those live service players go out and purchase other games and still play other games and you will not see that on a playtime graph you'll see that on a percentage of Revenue graph okay well you could but then you

could make the argument though the games that require a significant amount of playtime like free-to-play live service games are definitely impacted by the fact that people play spend the majority of their time on a few games and that that point is still there right like on PC console the the nature of trying to build a new life service and pull people away from these black holes is difficult but then you do that against the backdrop of what we just learned from Marvel Rivals it is possible to break through there but the actual bar in order to do it is substantially higher than a lot of developers pred yeah and so so every VC investment in the live Services space is a [ __ ] is going to get annihilated under based on his right so that that the cost of launching and reaching that bar is significantly higher yeah so maybe if Matthew ball had been better at this like maybe all the meetings with a16z and the rest of the VC Community would have LED them away from investing in life Services right instead you know all right whatever All

Right Moving on but yeah the actual main point of the deck we haven't gotten to the main point of the deck yet is talking about the new growth levers what stuff could cause growth in the future this is where you should basically shut it off right you shouldn't even you shouldn't even read this part right yeah there's no credibility here but but okay let's go y so there's 10 10 levers that I talked about non-core markets ugc platforms Discord and social switch to handheld Market AAA Mobile gaming App Store regulation new game genres AI advertising and GTA 6 pricing overall my sense here was there is one that I can believe and is already happening and it's D Toc there's three that I could probably squint and say you know what I could really hope for that so new Jame new game genres yeah I I really hope that that could be thing AI I hope that can be a thing of raising revenue and

raising engagement for core but we don't know that yet but then the other one like GTA 6 pricing will GTA actually increase their price why would they do they need to right why wouldn't you Chris Chris you got a weigh on this like will GTA6 actually raise from 70 to 80 as their base skew price I've actually heard a 100 so but like for Bas for Bas yeah so I don't think 80 is out of the question yeah I would absolutely say base should be higher and then you know if Phil we here and I agree and then you have tiers that where you unlock what prevented this in the past is that they never had to like GTA 5 didn't have to raise prices in order to be successful well also and this is a one product thing right you can't do this across the entire ecosystem so this is not a growth driver for the market it's crw driver for gep too right that doesn't help the overall Market if they do if they do an $801 $1 base skew price minimum could that open the door for balers gate and for no

[ __ ] way dude it's unicorn yeah yeah you think Madden or FIFA is gonna be able to get away with $80 skew it's like [ __ ] off right but some of these like massive RPG games could they not no it's I mean some of them like El the next Elder Scrolls in the next six years sure why not yeah we sorry not the one this but like the next Elden ring could it not given the scope and scale of that game no May but probably not no then I'm going to put that one the Hope in a dream category I'm not going to call that one completely out but then again the other ones like non-core markets in his own deck he's talking about how insular these markets are yeah like the only people that can make that successful is if you're at a massive scale in that insular Market becomes enough High Roi to build the bespoke live offs no ugc platforms Crest you can scream at this one already I think there could be some potential in ugc platforms if Ethan is going to be screaming there's there's like hardcore

ifs right like and and this is you know I'm I'm going to put gen you know gen prediction model on what Crest is going to say is if there is more pay to win mechanics there's more microtransactions and monetization and it's not just customization opportunities but that's already happening in Roblox there's a ton of pay to win games and Roblox no Roblox is just limited in terms of demographic right from a from a dispensable income like children have right so if they're unlocking spend at an adult level like over this age of 18 or 15 or whatever that is huge potential but they're not doing that I mean epic is spoken yeah so roblocks is putting in a battle royale Tech that is going to operate on I think it's like two gigs of RAM you know fortnite you have to download that thing is like 26 gigs or something like that if Roblox can finally get some of these more core and midcore Tech platforms available and

they do all of this other monetization which they have in place I do think that it may be able to start pulling some older players some developers to the platform they got a lot of work to do though and then on the other side epic's got a lot to do to make sure that they can make money and then they can be you know ufn is only a year and a half old which is you know and don't count epic out on what they're able to do to build into that Platform One Day UE and UE FN Unreal Engine and Unreal Engine for fortnite are going to come together and that could be magic how many times have we talked about this if they limit the monetization mechanics in I that's my if it's it's fail I I I think they just need Snoop Dog and Snoop Dog's son to come in and continue to bolster and make content for it and post about it I sent this to Ethan Easter egg Ethan please come back on the podcast and show us your Battle Scars

Discord and social I don't even think that counts to be honest not gonna count that one so there's no new platform happening in Discord that all of a sudden is going to open up gaming I'm Sor yeah they they did hire a gaming person to they can hire them it doesn't vac it a I understand I understand Matthew ball Matthew ball got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to go talk to Discord so he had to throw this thing in there for a bone you know I know how he works come on let's get real who the [ __ ] cares about Discord from a revenue perspective corre how can that be one of your 10 potential agreed that's absurd absolutely absurd the other one is switch to which we talked about well I think that's business as usual I do not think that's a lever of growth correct it could be incremental for third party maybe I mean compared to switch 2 was which was a dis switch was a disaster for third party so did you see his slide on that that was really interesting percentage that was going to Nintendo yeah oh it's what 50 or 60% it was more

than half wasn't it so so then becomes like 50 or 60s like 75 75 first party games that do that perform well on switch correct that one it's like 75% Nintendo probably even higher overall for revenue and then handheld Market which covered enough in this podcast around it being much more but incremental than about creating a new market aleaa Mobile gaming oh for Christ's sake oh you got to be out of your damn mind what does that mean this one is red like the news this week Resident Evil 2 sold 100K mobile platform like AAA Mobile gaming is not a thing Cloud streaming to mobile is not a thing not going to redo that one and then App Store regulation we already talked so yeah overall my report card here is I think one is a sure thing and

I think three to four we can hope for so then that's about 50% there what do you guys think what do you like do you agree or disagree with any of these growth drivers I was thinking out more like what else do I think he's missing and I feel like now correct me if I'm wrong I'll be honest I think I read maybe 75% of these slides I did my best there were a lot of slides the only thing I do not think he gave enough credit to is he talked about a little bit was the percent of eyes that were looking at short form video I don't think there's been enough research or interest or anything really predicting what's going to happen with the intersection between gaming and short form for me if I was going to look at what I think should be we we could look at what should also be looked at as hopeful is how that's going to morph and change over time is it going to be a new platform probably not like it's not I don't think it's going to be the metaverse style huge this is a whole new thing but I do think it's going to change form and I do think it's going to affect gaming more than we give

it credit for and the only other thing I think there was one slide that he talks about we touched on it earlier I've been bullish on China as a kind of a Innovation Hub for a while once they started moving into the Casual mobile space and they their games they were able to make were outperforming Western Developers for Western audiences I do think that we're going to see more Innovation definitely in casual mobile from Chinese based developers 100% so I for me there's more shards of Hope than Mr ball covered I don't even really know where to start here more than what I've already said I'll just say like I think what he's missing generally speaking I I I agree with him on the ad stuff I think ads are going to become more and more critical for growth to monetize the non- monetizable and I think that's the angle that he really didn't pursue because he doesn't really understand games all that well right it's like the fundamental problem with freeo playay is that they don't monetize very well in the west right so the

conversion rates are like three to 5% Max right versus Asia where it's like in the teens to 20% right so that's like the lever of growth that's a potential right but we haven't seen that over the last decade really except for a few notable exceptions like fortnite right so I think focusing on building games that monetize better because we still have not on console and PC in particular we still haven't really mastered monetizing outside of sports so non-sports games so I think there is better opportunities potentially for monetizing AAA gaming as I said like mobile like conversion needs to be higher so there would be more better mechanics to actually monetize the audiences that we already have in the west would actually be huge like if imagine if you went from three to four% up to like8 to 10 Perc I mean it would be insanely bullish for the industry generally speaking but obviously that takes different mechanics and Innovations around getting customers to spend and then I would also just say

reiterate the fact that I don't think mobile is nearly as bad as he thoughts actually mobile may be the only growth Vector in the next three to five years because after this year with a tough comp from switch2 and GTA we may not see growth for a while you know console yeah yeah yeah because because we're going to be in in in the back half of the cycle right and so like we may not see actual growth until the next cycle happens and and see what demand is for the next consoles so but unfortunately I kind of agree with his overall sentiment I can't really disagree with what he's saying I I think it's a really ridiculous that not one growth driver in his top 10 has anything to do with a [ __ ] metaverse which he wrote a whole goddamn book about two years ago right like let's be clear here right I mean like I don't want to keep going off on and on and on about this but dude he said that this was GNA be a trillion dollar business right and it wasn't like 20 years from now right so anyway so that's not part of his growth Vector anymore two years later so what else did I want to say

yeah I mean this is it's going to be a tough business you know for the next three to five years right we're basically single- digit growth type numbers across PC console and mobile so yeah and I have to say like after this report from Mr Matthew PA I don't think his his rate card's going down there's no way he's going to be out there like pitching this nonsense you know to uh the a16 Z's and the rest of the VC community and everyone else with this negative report that this is not going to help him at all but we'll see all right so a couple just quick takeaways for me before we wrap up I just think that we need to understand that the past doesn't always predict the future and the way he laid out some of the slides really shows that and I think we have to be mindful of all these predictions and everyone throwing you know it's basically them go people going all in on things are just predictions and so that was number one and I think we need to

realize that the game industry is in a completely different stage and we need to realize that we have to put our big boy and girl pants on we're not the young pups with the gross spurts that are going to be these huge numbers anymore it's going to be kind of slow and steady I mean we're adulting now and as an industry we got to realize it's these small optimizations it's finding many different things to make better rather than you know I don't know if we're going to unlock like one thing that's going to propel us and so you know because of that we have to look at where our competition is we used to think that it was you know a GTA or these other things inside our industry I think our competition is a social you know you know lur to your point is social video Tik Tok and YouTube when you look at all the charts of what share of time and share of wallet is starting to go from our core audience to these other places and so what are we going to do to keep people in our environment and

and how do we do that I mean if you have a child you have seen this firsthand you know crushy were just saying your daughter probably can't live without her phone and without Tik Tok she could probably live without a lot of the games and so not that we need to make our games more addicting but maybe maybe we do so the one that I honed in on as you know the growth Vector you know in Crest I was a little bit shocked that you agree agreed with me was advertising you know UA is back with the you know how AI is working and I think we need to find player friendly solutions to integrate advertising in a better way how do we do it non-intrusive how do we have new ad formats how do we have more collaborations more sponsorships in a way that players welcome it they welcome it they're okay with it in IRL Sports how do we make it okay within gaming and so that's that's kind of the one that I wanted to end on on I think of all of those 10 we got to figure that [ __ ] out I guess I just want to reiterate I think

part of the problem and i' I've read this before out there when these predictions come out is that the negativity around the space kind of drives the negative predictions right so when it was like the positive nature of his writing and what he was talking about in 2122 was because the industry was really positive back then and so it's like it's kind of like es and flows based upon what's going on in the industry so perhaps you know two years from now when things are better he'll write a more positive like research piece right we'll see yeah notice chis VC investing was not on his growth factors I know there goes the rate card [Laughter] dude all right everyone thanks for hanging in there with us for an extra long episode for an extra long 220 page report review of Matthew Ball's work see you all next week 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

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