TWIG #329: Royal Match Goes All-In, Discord Shifts Gears, Call of Duty Meets Its Match

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monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Clouds. Hero provides a complete suite of battle tested metagame features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fully featured engaging games? Check out heroid today at heroiclabs.com. [Music] Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor of Fun this weekend number 329 game industry news by industry insiders. Hi everyone, I'm Jen Dano. I play the marketing role on the podcast and today there's three of us. Monization star, Philip Blacking in from Canada with Adam close by somewhere. I think Eric Crest, I got nothing. Strategy and investing. Screaming at the clouds. Where is it? Okay, so here's what we got today. There must be some tariffs on celebrity sponsorships. So, I have an update on

Royal Kingdom and how much those things cost. Discord gets a new CEO before a potential IPO. Uh, some shooter talk. We were actually just were talking about a new Forex game called Kingshot right before we started recording. Maybe that'll eek in. Thoughts on the GameCraft podcast? And so I think many of you know um if you don't already know, you should listen to Gamecraft. They're on season 3. It's Mitch Laski and Blake Robbins. They do a great service to the industry. The latest couple, we have some thoughts and so we will go through that at the end of the episode. I'm just going to go right into shilling. Just a few things to note. MAU. So, for all of the marketers and even some non-marketers, MAU is in Vegas in 2 weeks, May 20th to 23rd. I'm actually going to go because I am going to be doing a very cool fireside chat and I think everyone's actually going to want to hear this. Even if you're a non-marketer, you're not going to want to miss it. It's the story we have been

waiting to hear, but I can't officially tell you what it is yet because I think the confirmation comes today. So, I'll probably go in Slack and announce it and then talk about it next week. Very excited to be asked to do that. Very honored, actually. Mishka wrote a blog post about Royal Kingdom Marketing because that's how he trolls me now is in a way I can't respond. So, he goes and and writes something. So, check that out in the newsletter and the blog. And then an early tease, another thing I'm excited about, Neil Long from mobilegamer.biz is doing another event. He calls them off thereord. They are 200 person gatherings. He did one in April in London. This one's going to be in LA because we have Summer Game Damefest. So on June 10th, you know, Neil and us here at Deconstructor Fun are going to host the event. So there's panels and conversations and everything is off the record. I don't think anything's off the record with Crest, but you know, it is what it is. So Crest, please come down. Can you I'll be there. Okay, awesome. I'm coming. And Phil, bring the cats.

Yeah, I would say, you know, Neil, for an event that's called Off the Record, you seem to take a lot of pictures and a lot of posts about this. I don't know. LA's a little far. Maybe London next time. All right. Well, I offered, my friend. All right. Corrections. Yeah. Let's talk about the Oblivion remaster, right? So, Eric last week said, "Free on Microsoft Game Pass really limits upside. 1.5 to 2.5 million units makes sense. Game Pass again, you know, limits upside. This thing has exploded. Uh 4 million players was the estimate from Bethesda. Now, that is players. That's not units sold. So, again, they're fudging the numbers a little bit because you're going to get some Game Pass tourists coming onto the platform. But Steam has been estimated at 1 million units from Video Game Insights. And so, if you kind of do a little bit of back envelope math, you know, we last heard around 35 million Game Pass MAU for Xbox and around 120 million Xbox MAU. I think this gets you maybe another one 1.5 million in Xbox

unit sales. So that's already push you at two 2.5 million in terms of units. And again, this is a full price game with a deluxe edition, thank god, with the horse armor edition. I think this thing gets to 3.5 4 million by the end of the year. Like these Steam RPGs, like they last forever. Skyrim has been around forever selling units. Bouldersgate is still a game that has pretty strong engagement on Steam and is moving units. No. He shakes his head in doubt. This is fan service. This is like a oneshot done, dude. All the sales are going to be in the first month, like 90%. Maybe my estimates a little bit low, but even then, you know, then they'll bring it down to 20 bucks and like I don't know. Here's the thing that's still interesting. Remember, they shadow dropped this, right? Very little marketing hype beforehand. Maybe they reduce marketing costs. And Jen, this is something that happened while I was at EA. Chris Bruso, the wonderful human being he is, you know, never was never, you know, shied away from taking credit from this, but Apex Legends just dropped. I think people forget that overnight, literally, and did what, 50

million in the first week. I forget the exact number, but the explosion was impressive. And I guess I keep coming back to thinking about what a model would be for whether or not you shadow drop something or whether or not you don't shadow drop something. How do you even think about this, Jen? No, that's a good question. And Apex is a great example. Like, you know, no one ever did that before, but no one's really done it since. It's so difficult to do because everyone's like, "How do we do that?" And no one wanted to pay a streamer a million dollars and then have them stop streaming a week later and then have the entire audience be like, "Oh, you were just paid to play this game. I am now no longer going to play." So, there were a lot of downsides in that specific Shadow Drop instance. I think in this case, I think they were working on this game for like four years or something. Cres is right. You are playing to a fandom that loves this IP. And that's the answer is you can do this in cases where you've got a built-in fandom. They actually I

think they did a live stream and I think that what happened was there was a live stream. It's kind of like old school Apple where the live stream they're like and now you can go play it. Actually, I think they did this at the Game Awards, too, where they released DLC for the Viking guy. God of War. Oh, God of War. Okay. It's Greek. I mean, Kratos. Greek. Jesus. You know, not my IP. All right. So, so God of War. I mean, I wish I think in cases where you've got a fandom, you've got eyeballs on a live stream, you know, and you want to just what a great call to action. Go play it right now. Oh [ __ ] Like, I'm hyped in the moment. Go play it. So, I think that works really well. I think the challenge is when you do a shadow drop, the platforms need to make room for that. Like what if you were another game and you had just launched and you just got pounced on by this like shadow drop. You also have to keep it secret. You know, you got to keep all your assets secret if you actually want to do that. Apparently, this might have been all of that secret. So anyway, I that's how I would think about it is if you have a

insane fandom, you just want to switch on because you've got like a live stream or something to point them to it and nothing else is really going on. Oh, budget standpoint too. It's a little bit cheaper, but that doesn't describe Apex, right? Apex was an unknown IP. I mean, I guess it had enough of the Respawn, Enigma, and like Titanfall vibes that you probably throw it into that bucket. I mean, so that was different, right? So, that strategy no one can really replicate, but they went out and locked in all of the top shooter streamers and paid them millions of dollars to on day one just switch all of their streams to that. the knock-on effect. The reason why no one does it anymore is because they were shooter tourists. Everyone came in, checked it out, and then they realized that they weren't authentically playing it. And so for you as the person I usually answer to, you're like, "Jen, you just brought me shitty traffic." Sounds like a dream game celebrity ad campaign. I don't know. A lot of riff wrap brand installs.

Okay, fine. I'll I'll transition to my correction. Speaking of marketing budgets, so I want to go back and talk a little bit about how much celebrities were paid because upon further investigation. It seems my projection for the total was 10 celebrities. That was incorrect. So guys, we're going to play celebrity marketing prices, right? So get ready. The next item up for bid in the showcase showdown are 10 expensive celebrities and a digital campaign for a game that drove 4x installs since the launch and 11% revenue in tier one countries. What is your bid for the cost of the talent only just celebrity only? And I gave you a hint last week before we bet. Yeah. What was the total dollar increase on the revenue before and after this campaign? Just so we have a dollar reference figure. The percentages are irrelevant, right? Oh, it's like half a million dollars in terms. It's really bad. Yeah. Like a million bucks. Let's say a

million bucks. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They've made an incremental a million dollars since this campaign began. Just so let let's go. That's not the right way to think about it, though. They're buying elsewhere. It certainly is. It certainly is. So, yes, we have to wait. This is not Phil. Phil is actually correct on this. No, he's not. No, he's not. This is not direct. This is not performance at marketing. Eric, go ahead. Lay out your case for this, which is why why we should be paying attention to the shortrun revenue number when you're buying lifetime value because these particular people that they acquired are the shittiest [ __ ] audiences possible and they are going to churn out as fast as they came in. And any incremental revenue that they generate from here on out is likely due to what they should have done from the beginning is [ __ ] performance marketing because then they get the right [ __ ] audience, right? This cohort is the shittiest [ __ ] cohort you could ever acquire for a mobile game, right? And so you can't possibly

think they're going to be generating significant amount of money from these guys at this stage because even in two weeks you would have seen conversion and spending right from this cohort right of what did you say how many people four times the installs right I mean in insane amounts of installs double the install rates right so that's what my point is by the way the install rate's pretty low so it isn't insane amounts I mean I would say that the lift is great. We didn't see lifts like this on the other campaigns from Squadbusters and Monopoly Go. So, I will say that it looks like from a top of funnel, more installs are happening. I agree a little bit that sometimes when you go broad, you do get a lot of players that aren't going to be the best LTV, but you're going gold mining and you're going to find some nuggets of gold. It's a very expensive way to go mine for gold. All right. All right. Let's go back to your little [ __ ] my game game. Yes. How much do you think the talent cost? All

right. 10 celebrities. 10. They're two ones. Three million each on average. Cuz some get more than others, I would imagine. Right. Yes. Very much. By the way, the [ __ ] LeBron James ad was insane. Like he actually is actually a decent actor. Like Yeah. He's actually he's not It doesn't sound forced with him. It was good. Anyway, I want to reaffirm the fact that the ads were actually quite good. Yes. I would say if they spent more than three million per $30 million total. I will throw up in my mouth if they spent more than that. Okay. This is disgusting. Disgusting. Your bid is 30. 30 million. Yes. Phil, what's your bid? So 10 celebrities, T1 celebrities, Americans. I would say probably LeBron's the most expensive and I probably go down from there. I'd say LeBron maybe 5 million would be off the envelope for LeBron. going downhill from there. So, what five times 10? Let's see. You get 50. All right. I'm coming with Eric around this. I'd say probably

around 30 million would be my my guess. Okay. Last week I guessed 15 based off of what I thought. You know, again, the taring and yes, LeBron was the most expensive. So, by prices right rules, you were both over. Uh, so yeah, the number is around 25ish. So, you're you're not that far off. So, it's 25ish. LeBron though. Okay. So, let's do the brass tax. The math here is not the brass tax. That's just talent. Yeah, that's just talent, right? And then the airplay, the spending on the actual ads themselves were not insignificant. So, my $50 million number seems way low, right? You know, so maybe it's 75, maybe it's even a hundred million they spent to drive 1 million in revenue. Yeah. I don't know. I I that feels really high. Um, but really these ads are going out on the [ __ ] NBA playoffs, right? Yeah. Like it's a you know that's a million million to two million

placement. So I I think the thing that I'm probably the most sad about as well is as a marketer you go into this being like, hey, I'm going to go and make all this additional digital creative. I'm going to put it in UA. I'm going to drive more installs with performance marketing. So the money I'm spending on those celebrities, I'm going to make it back in performance marketing. So I took a look at what is resonating right now for their performance using the sensor tower creative gallery. And listen, it, you know, it is what it is and that's the tool that I have. None of the celebrity campaigns are popping as getting the top share of voice in their UA creative right now. Okay. All right. I'm going to say this one more time and then I'm going to get lay off of it. There is no [ __ ] overlap between LeBron James and people that play this [ __ ] game. Okay, this is [ __ ] stupid. Okay, there's no way that can drive any additional new audiences that spend money on this game. It is ridiculous. Ridiculous. I'm a huge fan of LeBron. I think he's

amazing, but that is not going to drive me to play some [ __ ] puzzle game, right? It's just again, it's a marketing fever dream. I know all these marketing guys love this stuff. I would too. Unlimited budget, hang out with the stars, watch them do their thing, you know? But I just imagine I've been in these rooms where these people talk about how amazing these campaigns can be and all these ideas and these [ __ ] agencies coming up with the most hairbrain [ __ ] ideas, which is exactly what happened with this ad [ __ ] thing. It's just dumb. That's it. All right. So, to me, you've got to look at the uplift in Royal Match, not just Royal Kingdom, because there could be crosscontamination, right? People SEO. So, that's one. Yeah. You got to look at that. You could be seeing decreased CPIs on we call it performance marketing, but everything again is performance marketing. I'm surprised, by the way, brand marketers have conceded that term cuz what does that make them unperformant marketing? And I would say the other thing to keep in mind is that match doesn't have the same spend velocity as other games on the forum. So, you're not likely to see shortrun

revenue impacts as large as you would have in those genres because remember, engagement is tied to monetization and match. You're only syncing out currency as fast as you're completing levels. People complete levels at a pretty steady rate. I think there's a little bit more going on here, but I agree with you. This is rather silly. Yeah. So, and I've said it a lot and thank you, Phil, for recognizing that it isn't just looking at this graph. This is all we have. It's been not even two weeks. So, there there are other factors. I will say though that well, first of all, I agree that I probably would not have spent this much on talent. I have not necessarily seen big talent creative like this be successful in our space. In fact, it's one of the most expensive talent campaigns. You know, it probably would rival Call of Duty in terms of like how much they actually paid talent. Uh I don't know if I've seen anything like this in mobile before. And so that's why I keep harping on this because it's like holy [ __ ] this is what we're up to now. But Phil, I play

this game. I just cannot believe that the KPIs of this game would have warranted this and like why wouldn't you do it for Royal Kingdom? Like I I just don't understand. I don't understand. Yeah, it actually would make more sense on Royal Kingdom more established. Yeah, I like this is early days for this game. They did wait 5 months as a player. Like I said, I noticed that they put in the metacard system, which is a great, you know, retentive product feature, but it's like nowhere near what Royal Match has to offer. I I don't know. I'm so confused. Okay, sorry. Let's be clear here. So, Royal Match does 60 million a month in March, right? Royal Kingdom does 8 million, you know, like I mean, royal this is a very small game relative to Royal Match. It takes some time to build up DAU to collect daily active customers. It takes time to build that. But to your point, you know, it just seems like a strange way to to launch this one. Yeah, this is

basically almost a launch campaign to some degree given how the scale of this thing. So it's like a launch 2.0. And so I actually what I love about this is that they worldwide launched in November. It's been 5 months. The game has been out. It's been performing. They've been adding features and they're doing what I like to say is the slow and steady wins the race. You have no leaky bucket. You're checking your retention. You're ready to start pouring the dollars into the top of the funnel to get players into it. But they did in the last title, right? We looked at those charts in terms of their download ranking. It's exactly the playbook they used on their last title. Understand the shape of your output curve. Make sure things are solid and then hit the go button. No pun intended. All right, let's talk a little bit more about creative. So, Appslier has a new report. It's called the state of creative optimization 2025. Uh, it's one of the first kinds of reports that they've done like this. They took a look at over a million creative variations, two and a half billion in spend. Some really interesting charts. So they

benchmarks for share of cost, IPMs, retention across verticals. I really like how they're bucketing this into specific user motivations and hooks and UGC. So there's not been a lot of reports on deep dives into creative that's really broken this out. like creative. I think we've all talked about this in performance marketing and user acquisition. It's all about creative because you have to figure out what is actually driving all of the algorithms. So in here they go through each category. They got casual, midcore, and so you can look at your specific category and dig into that. They have some experts talking. So more on this in the newsletter. We just got it so I haven't had a chance to like really dig in, but love to see these kinds of free tools. Thank you, Appsier. Love it. Chris, you want to talk about Discord? Speaking more of ads, right? So, Jason Citroen is stepping down as CEO of Discord after 13 years. I did forget that he was actually the CEO of Hammer

and Chisel, which was another MOA failure in gaming. I forgot about that. So, they have appointed this guy uh Humam Sakini. He's a former Activision Blizzard vice chairman as new CEO. Citroen was known for starting open faint and building discord from an earlier venture as I said on hammer and chisel. He has basically guided this company to over 200 million active users and they tried to expand beyond gaming and go broad more broad and also try to monetize and try to distribute games. They've done tried a lot of different [ __ ] things in order to generate revenue over the years but have actually failed. So So just to be clear, right, Zini, this is what's so crazy. He helped scale King's operating income at the time with a lot of changes in in terms of how they delivered their game. He worked on Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, and he's expected to lead Discord to this next growth phase, right? They say that they have no

plans for his IPO, which is complete [ __ ] but they are basically hiring Zakini as a step towards that possibility. plans because Jason came out in an interview and said like obviously this is what it means but there's no immediate plans. It's all this legal [ __ ] like you know they just can't talk about it. Right. Right. Okay. So here's my take on this really quick. So this is a [ __ ] coup to talk right ultimately. Right. So Hamom is a [ __ ] animal. Right. Like he is ex McKenzie. He's trained by the best of the best Bobby Cotch, right? He's replacing this entrepreneur founder to help drive monetization and microtransactions and every other [ __ ] thing they could do to make money on this company in order to do make an IPO. Right? Period. End of sentence. This is that's it. Right? And so this guy is out because he spent the last 15 years building an amazing product, amazing product. I don't want to discount that at all. But he never was able to actually generate revenue. Right? So this has been a money losing

money pit for years and years. They have raised almost a billion dollars of funding over the years. Like a billion, right? The last valuation was $15 billion. The investors are basically saying enough is enough. We need to make some [ __ ] money and we need an exit, right? This is the type of [ __ ] that these [ __ ] VCs are after, right? We want a [ __ ] exit. 15 bill, you know, and that's it. And so they just hired this guy because they are generating profits. And so as we talked about a few weeks ago, they are starting to do advertising, which is something that this guy as well as like Bachinsky or whatever the guy's name from Roblox is, they were adamantly against. Yeah. Ads from the very beginning, right? That this is never happening on our platform. Twitch, same thing, right? But as Eric Seafford once said and continues to say, and one of the only things that guy has gotten right, no, I'm just kidding. Is Everything is a [ __ ] ad network when you've run out of ideas on something else to do to make money, right? And so,

yes, this is an ad network and that's what it should have been all long and now they have the right guy to fight the good fight, I suppose. Yeah. No, I I hear you. It is actually Did you I use it a lot more on, you know, because I'm staring at my screen all day on my computer. I use a Mac and I was starting to see ads pop up. I guess I was in some sort of testing group. So, Last of Us, you know, for the show popped up on my computer. It was really cool. I was like, "Oh, look at this. I'm in the test group." Super excited. And then, you know, like I said earlier, mobile's coming in June. Actually, they had a press kit that went out. They had a really cool kind of, you know, video using Brawl Stars, our favorite Brawl Stars. And so, I think that this is something that everyone, every marketer is looking for a channel. Where else? because all of you, you know, money types and all Phil does is yell at me and say, "Jen, how do you attribute anything here?" I heard that this the pilot was completely sold out like

within a week or not even that long of them announcing the pilot. Everyone was like, I want in. I can get my ad in front of gamers who love this stuff. I can target like specific kinds of other competitive games. So, my prediction is it's going to be insanely expensive, but hopefully they've got the hooks in place where, you know, you're going to be able to go whale hunting like the old days. So, I'm excited about this. Let's see what happens in June. I know that Jules is over there from EA. I don't know. She is a rock star. She's the CRO. So, I think Julie, yes. Yes. CRO CRO. She joined a couple months ago. So, you've got like an advertising gaming ninja. She left Unity to go here. And so, I'm excited for them. I want to see what happens. Yeah, this is hugely important. I mean, we talk about ads all the time. We need more inventory. Like, mobile lives or dies on advertising, which we'll talk about later. And not only that, like Discord has these quests features, which is very similar to a lot

of what's happening in the web 3 meta, which I know everyone's really excited about, but how can I get more engagement through an ad? You know, how can I reactivate people? how can I give them currencies or resources. Like a bunch of people have been playing with this. You know, if you're familiar with Prime Gaming, they've done a lot of this kind of giveaway type stuff, but the type of ad units you can have on Discord are really unique and really engaging. And I think the thing that's going to be fantastic for Discord is that they have a lot of data, right? They know what your preferences are when it comes to games. The only thing they don't have is your spending profile, which is the most important thing when it comes to targeting is where you're spending money. But I think if they're still able to get what Discord servers you're on, I think there's an opportunity here for some pretty good targeting. Let's see. I mean, it was Reddit's coming along as well. We don't often talk about Reddit. It's the same idea. Back in the day, you know, when I've tested Reddit, it's just so expensive. It was never worth it in terms of rorowaz. However, if they can figure that out and get better, they IPOed and they are on fire. when you search on Google and everyone searches

now and says on Reddit, so much of the traffic is coming from Google's change in search. That's another one. If they can get the CPMs and CPIs down, another channel for people to check out. I just I haven't seen it resonate yet. This was really disappointing to me because Jason, the founder, being able to take this company to IPO, I think would have given gaming a seat at the tech table. So right now you've got, you know, Airbnb, Facebook, like a lot of these tech companies still have their founder CEOs with them. Stripe, you know, the Stripe brothers is another example. And I thought this was an opportunity for us to get a seat at that table as one of these influential techies. And not only that, it's becoming more and more important when we think about public policy. Like these guys are flexing their public policy muscles more and more frequently. And I think us having a seat at that table was really important. The fact we're not going to have that, I think, is really disappointing. Like we still don't have I think a good figure head for this industry in the same way that that Zach or the Coulson brothers are for their respective industries.

Like Bobby Kodc not a founder but not someone I think he wanted to be the head of the industry. Chip Hawkins left so you know he doesn't count. David Lazuki from Roblox he's a founder but he doesn't give a [ __ ] about gaming. Didn't start the company for gaming to begin with. Physicist education experiences. Remember they didn't even they don't even call it games anymore, right? on Roblox, it's experiences. And of course, it's tied up in all the app store rules, but I don't think they were against that anyways. I don't think they've ever cared about gaming. And then, of course, we have Gabe, right? Gabe should be our figurehead. Gabe should be the one going out and batting for us and hanging out with all these techies. But at the end of the day, he's just in New Zealand hanging out on his yacht. And so, I'm still waiting for us to figure out how we're going to get to seat the table and have more influence broadly. But like, we're excluded from all these techy conversations. Like, Silicon Valley exists in a different sphere than we do. And I'm just bummed because Jason was a real one, right? As you mentioned, Eric, like he was into Mobas. He was launching MOA studios left and right and pivoted Discord and then repivoted Discord back to gaming, right? And so I'm just I'm really bummed because we continue to kind of not have I think a good

figurehead and have more influence, I would say, in culture and in policy. What about Tim? Yeah, I don't think they go public with Tim Sweeney at the helm. That's just Oh, you think they're going to bring in someone new, Mr. Crest? If they ever go public? Yeah, of course they're going to go public. They got the Disney C. He is definitely not a CEO of a publicly traded company. Like Yeah. Yeah. I think that what we're seeing is the market wants more business operators for these game companies that have traditionally been very creativeled. And I think just in general, you're starting to see founders be moved aside into the Aloha suite of the board and the advisor slot for operators to come in and really run the things. I don't know. That's what I feels like is going on in the space. But crush, you would know more than me just in general, right? I mean, didn't we talk about this with Supercell when they brought in the CFO who was the indicator that they wanted to go and be a grown-up company? Look, I'm very flippant and

very obnoxious about these type of things. And I'm just I'm half joking really. Like I think it's sad that Jason's not can't bring this thing to the light, right? like you lose a lot when you get rid of these founders that you lose the core of what the companies are but when you become a publicly traded company it is a completely different skill set required and a different mindset even and if there's anything else on that I will let you know but it looks like Philip has it covered all right so for Netis so NI announced that they're make another executive departure Simon Zoo who is the president of global investments and partnership he's leaving after 12 years definitely a friend of the podcast, someone that I've met a few times. He led studio investments including Bungie, Niantic, Deolver, Second Dinner, and a bunch of other things. And the guy who managed the Neti Blizzard relationship, is taking over his responsibilities. I apologize. The other departure is Matthew Weisser, who is the former head of publishing of North American Studios. So, my take on this is what? First of

all, Simon Zoo is a good guy. Like, I've met him a couple times. He's just a really nice guy, super gamer, whatever. and he has been involved and supported a lot of game investment in the space like and I personally think he does it a lot better than most of the venture capitalists that we talk about on this podcast right so again a huge sponsor of gaming in the west and he made a tons of great investments as we talked about but what they're not talking about they were also NIS was an LP in a lot of VCs including makers right I'm sure they invested in others as well but I'm just not sure which ones I guess the other thing I want to say is that part of the reason that they were doing a lot of this investments and if you actually if you think about it from a game theory perspective is part of the reason they do all these investments is to get access to what the [ __ ] is going on in the space right so the more companies that you're invested in the more VCs that you're part of the more information flow about you what what's happening in the market that's part of the reason that a lot of these strategics and big companies particularly in China were making investments and so in theory

perhaps they've extracted all the knowledge that they need so now that They could bring everything back to China and start building [ __ ] right? Interesting. That that's one approach. The investment as espionage tactic. I like it. Okay. That that is a fact. I mean that the reason that they do a lot of these investments is to figure out what the [ __ ] is going on in the space like like it gives them information flow. All right. But as we talked about before in this podcast months ago, right, when the these rumors were swirling, particularly after GDC, is that this is part of the CEO, the billionaire guy who became CEO of this company, pulling out of the West, right? Like he's basically pulling out of the West because Americans are lazy and expensive, right? We don't work enough and we don't we're too expensive. And so they're basically taking all these teams and associated with it and getting rid of them and bringing back the investments to China and other parts of the world, right? So I wish Simon the best. I' all my interactions with him are super positive. I think just the kind of the nature of the new strategy

at Netis. So there you go. No, I agree with you. I met him once and some of his posts on LinkedIn are when the Blizzard relationship in Eddies ended and then when it came back you can tell I think he posted he's like I have 30,000 hours in Starcraft and wow it was like really amazing and you know to our earlier conversation with Discord is when you have a leader that truly loves and engages and understands our industry and how it works and operates it's always a bit sad to lose them for the bean counters because there is an art and a science to what We do super sad. I think I'm super curious of what's going to happen with Netis in gaming in general. They're pulling out of so much in gaming. Hold on. I did I did hear people were worried really worried about money drying up for a lot of these venture capital firms. Like already we're already seeing pullback on venture capital from an investment perspective. but raising new funds. A lot of these funds, gaming funds in specifically, were funded by Chinese companies and ch

Asian companies that were LPs in these funds. So, they're not going to pull their money out per se, but they're definitely not putting more money in, right? So, it's going to get harder and harder for L for VCs to raise money for gaming. That was what I was hearing at GEC. All right, Phil, you want to take the next one? Yeah. Yeah. So, Convoy has been reporting on the relative share of gaming venture capital that is going to AI and we had another chart that came from pitchbook which was also looking at the overall venture activity in AI. So, in 2025 Q1 the overall amount of VC funding that went to AI was 71%. The amount of gaming venture capital that went to AI related projects was 10% and it's been basically relatively flat since 2021. Our share of AI investments. I will say this is not a good sign for this industry if VCs do not look at AI and

gaming as an opportunity. In fact, I'm extremely disturbed by this because we've been going through like the last year on this podcast. I know we can be negative Nellies, but we are trying to search for growth, the eternal quest for growth. And if you're telling me that, you know, crypto is not going to be it, you see, if all of these things are not it, AI was supposed to be where we really hitch some wagon, but if you're telling me that we aren't seeing an acceleration in the amount of venture capital in gaming that's going to AI, I'm extremely troubled by that. And I think this also reflects the flip side of what it means to be where art meets science, which is that we can't optimize all of our pipelines with AI in the same way I think a SAS company could or more traditional tech company could, right? There's still parts of the supply chain which are going to be resistant to AI are not going to be as optimizable or have as much margin as we might see in other industries. And I think this is one of the first pieces of evidence we're really seeing around this. And so I'm worried. Let's keep track of this. Convoy also just released a report today that did say overall venture activity in gaming is still it's not down in in 2025 Q1. So there's something going on. We're

not totally dead, but I am really troubled by this. Not down. What the [ __ ] does that even mean, dude? It's some silver lining. That is like Come on. Let's just stop. We talk we talk about Enzo. We can talk about silver lining. Oh, well my Okay. Attention app and game developers. Are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games? With Sensor Tower, you get the ultimate competitive edge. Whether it's breaking into new markets, fine-tuning your UA strategies, or boosting monetization. Dive into data like never before. Track global trends across app stores. Analyze market leading adop purchase and inapp ad strategies and benchmark your performance with realtime insight. The best part, Sensor Tower doesn't just deliver data, it helps you turn it into action with intuitive tools and expert analysis. It's everything you

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potential meets performance. [Music] All right. Well, let's get into shooters first because it's, you know, is that growth? Are is there growth in shooters, Phil? No, not really at all. Uh, so so two two mobile shooter launches this week. So, we have once Human from NIE, if you remember, this is a title they've already released on Steam. Survival crafting game. It's done fairly well. It's kept a lot of its DAU around, and so they decided to port the game to mobile. This is NIS, by the way. So far, I would say it doesn't seem to be going well. And I think further is evidence that pre-registrations are a stupid metric. I would put it right there next to wish lists. I would actually even say it's stupid than wish lists, particularly because you have people going out and running UA campaigns for pre-registrations. But once human gained 30 million pre-registrations and right now the downloads are about around 2 million, not a good sign. So then you've got Delta Force. So, if you remember Delta Force, I had that interview with, you know, one of the studio heads at Team Jade with inside of Timmy that's making this. They've already released

the game on Steam. It's had incredibly stable PSU. And they had a mobile version of Delta Force, which has already been released in China. So, this is the global version. And so, they had 25 million pre-registrations and 17 million downloads so far. So, you know, I would say there doesn't seem to be a correlation when we add up all the evidence together. And I think Delta Forc's downloads are probably not related to pre-registration. And so far, both games are doing once human I think isn't going to have legs in the west, but it looks like Delta Force has a little bit more legs. We are looking right now at daily active users between both of them. And we I also mobile there. It's hard to benchmark this. Call of Duty Mobile, by the way, in terms of active users has actually been on a slow decline since really 2021, but revenue has been pretty steady. But that's a separate narrative. But Delta Force is kind of creeping up around where Call of Duty numbers were. This is one to keep track of. I would say the tech on Delta Force was super impressive. You know, this is a large

scale battle royale game. It has an extraction mode as well, but to be in a map with over, you know, 63 other people on mobile is still an incredible experience. And I just want to pour one out for Battlefield Mobile. This could have been you. Could have been you. Uh, Industrial Toys. Um, they made some mistakes in some early versions of this game before just really trying to port Battlefield over to mobile. The one last thing I want to say about this, and I think we didn't get a chance to cover this when it comes to Delta Force, is that they have a peer-to-peer marketplace when it comes to gun skins, very similar to CS:GO. And we also mentioned that the Rainbow Six Siege, they have a peer-to-peer marketplace as well. And it's kind of been a subtle, you know, behindthe-scenes trend. Very curious to see whether or not we'll see more marketplaces in shooters. I'd be really looking at Apex Legends. if they were to go this direction, particularly because EA already has all the auction house tech from FIFA, but curious to see how the auction house would play out with mobile now, too. We got to break this thing down a little bit more because the fact of the matter is that these games are amazing. I downloaded both of them,

once human and Delta Force, and so the the fidelity and the development cost of these things were [ __ ] insane, right? But Delta Force in specific has been in China for quite a while, right? Relatively. It just launched in the US and the China is like 97% of its revenue, you know, life to date so far in but in the US it's a disaster, right? Absolute [ __ ] disaster. Like you can see 10 million downloads, 1.4 million in revenue like in the first like few weeks and it's going down already. Like I don't know. This doesn't seem like it's going to have any legs at all, right? For a I don't think it'll have any they'll have no legs in the West. I mean we've already known that shooters beyond Call of Duty have no legs legs in the West. Okay. Okay. that that's once human makes absolutely no sense for mobile in the west period. Like that game is not a mobile game at all. It is a PC console game. So these are games are completely out of touch with what actually is doing well in the market in my humble opinion. Right. I wish Adam was here just to either confirm or deny my assumptions. All right, moving on to

things that don't make sense. I need this to be explained to me because I'm kind of baffled by this situation. is that because it doesn't it's really unclear to me after reading this. It says Blizzard reportedly taps Nexon to publish Overwatch Mobile and Starcraft. So, are they actually just publishing it or are they developing the games and publishing it or like what's exactly happening here? Because either way, it doesn't make sense. Like why can't Blizzard publish their own [ __ ] games, right? Or is it only in China? Like what what's happening here? Anybody have an idea? The only thing I pulled from this quote was, "Blizzard has been bidding since the fourth quarter of last year for major Korean game companies offering content development rights using the Starcraft IP and the Korean and Japanese service rights for Overwatch Mobile as a package deal. So, it's development. It's got to be development. They don't have they don't have the staff for this, Eric. They don't have the staff for this or the expertise. This isn't just rights. This

is like they're going to go out and develop Starcraft Mobile. They're going to go out and develop Overwatch Mobile. This isn't going to be Blizzard in house. Korean and Japanese service rights for Overwatch Mobile. Oh, that's publishing guys. Offering content development rights. Okay. Starcraft put I don't know. Put that over here for Overwatch Mobile. What I read from this sentence is publishing in Japan and Korea. Okay. Okay. So I Starcraft I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Like and probably, right? Like isn't Korea like one of the number one countries for Starcraft? So, sure, have, you know, maybe have them take a swing at that. You don't have a US-based team, but what it looks like is somebody else is developing Overwatch Mobile and it would be published by whoever this is. Who are we talking about? Nexon, which makes sense, right? In Korea and Japan. Okay, which is that makes total sense. But if they to the extent that they're outsourcing any game development for mobile, is that happening? Is Overwatch being developed by a third

party, the Overwatch mobile game? And I didn't even know there was a Starcraft mobile game. I'll be honest. I know there's an Overwatch one, but I would be surprised if it wasn't the Call of Duty setup where you have Western product management and you have Eastern development. Seems like probably where I'd guess Overwatch Mobile will go. Okay. All right. And they did that for Diablo, right? They did it for Diablo, too. No. No. And Yeah. And I think it makes a lot of sense. I think it's missed opportunities, but whatever. You know, it is what it is. This makes This makes a ton of sense. This is your strategy. They just shift it to Asia. This is brilliant. This is exactly what they should be doing. know that you get plausible deniability when it comes to monetization. Stop that [ __ ] full of loot boxes. [ __ ] loot box. Let's go. Anyway, I guess my point is I agree with you, Phil. I've been saying that for a while, quite a while. Don't bother making games yourself, Blizzard. You can't make mobile games. Period. End of sentence. Outsource it. Having said that, this [ __ ] particular press release really had me confused. So, I don't know if it was a press release or like I don't know this like video

gamechronicle.com. I see like this sounded like some backroom reporting, but we'll keep an eye on all of that. Enzoy, Phil, and please, you got to make sure after you share your chart that you share the picture I made for you. Well, I think Eric dropped in a quote here from the Craftton Report, the quarterly earnings, that it was the fastest selling title in the company's history. Wow. Eric going around the Enzo. What? Did not say that. The fastest selling. They have 5,000 users. 5,000 users. Dude, concede. See, concede, Philip. This is a failure. Absolute failure. Whoa. Absolute failure is some really strong language. So, close up here. They've already sold a million units. So, that puts them at what around 35 million maybe. And by the end of the year, 1.5 maybe two. Look at I agree with you. This thing has been lukewarm. We went over some of the things they could have done better. I would say the most important thing they need to do now is get this game in a much better shape when it comes to engagement and being able to sell more

copies because they're never going to get to a DLC model where this is right now. I do agree with you on that. Just for the record, dude. Craftton is an absolutely massive company, right? They generate $1.4 billion from mobile alone. So, like this is absolute mice nuts, dude, for them. So, this is a failure. An abject failure. The story's not over. The story's not over. Share this [ __ ] picture. One of my clients actually uh for those uh only listening, um in order to concede it, I put a plumb bob, which is the little green diamond thing on Phil's LinkedIn photo just just to troll him a little bit on this since he's been enzoy crazed. Okay, moving on. Game changers podcast. First of all, highly recommend Game Changers podcast for anybody that's interested. Mitch and Blake talking about the industry. Lots unanimous from

lots of anecdotes, lots of OG [ __ ] right? I've been listening really since they started. Great podcast. Sorry. Great anecdotes from their perspectives on the industry. I generally agree with everything that they're saying. They're kind of like saying the quiet parts out loud a lot of times and they're very straightforward and matter of fact about their opinion. But it was this latest one or the one of I think the first or second one this season. This is the third season that they made this assertion that really got me thinking. It got me I was just kind of in my head all weekend about this thing. So I wanted to bring this to the group and discuss debate. So Mitch's argument is that the distribution duopoly from Google and Apple caused consumer preferences for high LTV games. Right? He views that the distribution mechanisms shaped by this duopoly determined what games were introduced to the customers and that this in turn shaped what players preferred. So what he's contending is that new methods of discovery are now required to create a

more vibrant ecosystem with innovation in the space. And they also suggested that Steam is creating the same dynamics on PC. And of course their solution is their biggest investment which is Discord, right? So this is brings back the Discord thing. So you know and generally speaking obviously he's pushing his own book. So usually I would just ignore it and say okay a venture capitalist is pushing his own book because Discord is a solution for the problem on PC and for Steam, right? But I don't know. It just got me really thinking is that like is this really the reason that we have like basically four or five genres that dominate this platform? So my assumption has always been that consumer preference came first, right? Players have been deciding what games they want to play and what mechanics they're willing to spend on. And given the high LTV nature of these games and the high spenders, the whale type driven economies, there's only a few mechanics that actually can drive spend. And the whales tend to prefer

casino, puzzle, forex, and RPG games. So general assumption on this is that the whales have been driving the genre preference because that's the only people that are spending money and that's the only market that really matters in the space. So do you think it's Apple Google's duopoly that's at fault? So what do you think Philip? I don't think they said that the duopoly has changed consumer preferences and I think that you know the wording here is really important and so the closest I could get when listening to the podcast again and for those listening at home this is 422 on the time stamp is that they say there's this race to the highest ROI category casino match 3 etc because the UA spending required to bring those games to mass market scale forces you out of innovative content into these tried and trueue play patterns they talk about it again in 2016 they say the dark side of freeto play and IEP started to accelerate the UA and allowed for elastic pricing and whale hunting on the platform. I honestly can't even follow their logic on what they're saying here because of

course when you have an LTB that's X number then UA in a relatively frictionless market which is what mobile is you're going to bid up UA to LTV. That's not a dark side of anything. That's just how a market that has very little friction works. Like this has a lot of comparables to perfect competition model in economics. We have a market with very easy exit and entry. We have a market with really lightning fast user acquisition where we can calculate UA and LTV at any moment. I think they totally get this story backwards. This isn't anything about the duopoly or platform incentives. This has always been about user acquisition. This is the story of mobile. It is about user acquisition and distribution. The platforms existed or not. This wouldn't have happened without them. And they don't provide any explanation for why this doesn't happen on Steam. Right. I'll tell you because they're talking about leaderboards and how leaderboards were this discovery system and when they took that away discovery went away and that leaderboards are really this perverse incentives but none of this exists on Steam attribution. It's because for the first time ever on

mobile and it's everything you love is as a marketer I now have to report on the ROI of the spend that I have and so everyone got addicted to rorowaz and direct attribution before you know crash your favorite thing IDFA when on mobile we knew exactly how to go out with a sniper and get that whale and take them down that created in a sense a vicious cycle of performance marketing and UA being go out and find me more of this and and so that's the piece for me is this direct attribution that is the link and the cause of the chicken and the egg is that fact that does exist on Steam. But this is what was keeping me up at night is that is the nature of freeto play and the way people spend on freeto play is the reason that this stuff works, right? Apple did everything they could to promote premium games during the early days of Apple ecosystem,

right? They showcased them on the on on the stage for all their keynotes. They [ __ ] market the [ __ ] out of them on the store, you know? Dude, they even still have [ __ ] editorial on the store trying to like showcase these [ __ ] games. But that's not what resonated. And what I know and everyone else knows or should know in this industry and I think this may be the disconnect is that this is not a premium model right this is a whale model right where 3 to 4% people convert and the top 5% of that 3 to 4% so a fraction of a percent of the people that actually download your game are generating the majority of your revenue right and so you really only give a [ __ ] about that small group of people that are spending insane amounts of money right and so what I'm trying to say is that the mechanics that are built around Forex, casino, puzzle, and RPG are catering to that group, right? So, it's irrelevant that the different distribution methods. Frankly, Apple and Google have nothing to do with the distribution methods. All

Facebook and Apploven and others, right, that are doing the performance marketing, but it's the tastes of that audience that's willing to spend is what's driving this business, not the distribution. distribution has nothing to do with it except for the fact that they can target these [ __ ] that are spending insane amounts of money. You know what I'm saying? So, this is what was get me keeping me up at night, right? Yeah. I think it's a chicken in the egg cuz I think you're right and I think, you know, I'm right. If you don't have the play that allows there to be whales and then the platform allows you to hunt the whales, downloads have cratered since, you know, the loss of AT and how difficult it is to go out and find players. Revenue has been increasing because games have been figuring out more dark arts to get people to spend more. So, if we had all these different alternative distribution mechanisms out there, do you think anything would change in the ecosystem? Would it become more innovative? Would we see new genres? Would we see new innovations at all? No. It's just going to go back to the same thing that people

are willing to spend money on because that's the only people. There's only a few people that are willing to spend money on this freetoplay at scale make the model work, right? And I have consensus with you on that point, Eric. And I think that's what hurts their argument the most is that if this duopoly didn't exist, well, would things be that much better? No. We'd still have the same LTVUA game, which is that you have LTVX and you bid up UA up until UA equals LTV. that that equation and perfect market still works. I have no idea what they're talking about here. Yeah. So, a discord is not a solution. It's just going to be another part of the problem, right? In theory in terms of innovation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Agree. That this is what the argument was killing me was that I was like, okay, wait a minute. Maybe this is reinforcing these models and these systems that are, you know, extracting as much money as possible from the whales, right? Like if the UA environment is the one that's actually causing that, that's interesting. But I think it's just the player preference of those that will are willing to spend, right? Until player preference changes. It's even the inverse of what they mentioned, right? Like if you know, we were talking about would things be

different if there were alternative distribution sources. Well, yeah. We go back to a pre-EAT world. Like really Mitch and Blake should be blaming Apple and Google for the AT situation. It's about distribution. That's what caused all this [ __ ] when we talk about fake ads. But they're trying to say like freetoplay, IEP, and loot boxes are the dark side. No, no. fake ads and the modern state of mobile user acquisition is the dark side. And that was caused by the duopoly, but at is the problem here, not this other [ __ ] they're trying to mention. This always existed. I have no idea what they're talking about. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. There is the play into the dopamine. You know, it's why casinos and gambling have addicts. And so, I do think that games have been adopting more of those dark mechanics. So my other counter to their argument is that look the tastes and the genres that are doing well on console and PC are still hugely you know like 85% of the traffic is from games that have existed like so my other point is that PC and console is in the same situation right they've matured to a

level in which 85% of the use is using the same type of genres the same games that have been existing forever right so I would argue that additional ways of finding these customers is not going to change what consumers are preferring, right? Even on console and PC, right? Like the nature of the platform itself is determining what genres do well. It's not a question of discovery and distribution. And so Discord is not going to help that either, right? We're not going to see more innovation on the space because Discord comes on because the preferences of the consumer have already been stated until we have a new platform. The causal arrow goes both ways, right? So let's take a look at hybrid casual. Do you think hybrid casual exists as a consumer preference or as a function obviously at some level it does but do you think hybrid casual is more of a function of institutional incentives or do you think that's more of a function of consumer preference? Both time you know disentangling these two things because of the motivations of the ad system and hyper casual makes

money off of the you know the five ads that they show you right away. They shove it in front of your face everywhere you are because everything's an ad platform as you like to say. They're on Tic Tac. They're on social. Oh, this cute little time waster game. Looks really fun. Looks really simple for me to pick up and play. I want to give it a I want to give it a shot. Same thing with Squad RPG, right? Like, you know, consumer preferences may be for Squad RPGs, but they've been in decline because the U user acquisition isn't there anymore, and they haven't been able to pivot to the same fake UA strategies that Forex does, right? Forex would have been killed if they didn't pivot to this, right? So, UA and distribution does play a large role in what genres succeed and which ones don't. Yeah. Which is why, and Crest pointed this out, if you look at all of the art styles on Forex games that are working, what is working? White Out Survival, Last War, Kingshot looks like a ripoff of an art style of Supercell. You know, there's a massive 4X monetization machine behind these more approachable art styles. And that's like a lot of the thesis of why Supercell games have worked so much is they have

this really fun, casual, appealing brand on top of a cash machine. My point again is that any new distribution, it has nothing to do with distribution, right? It has to do with consumer preference from a spending perspective. And so, yes, they're making more casual games, but the underlying mechanics of these games are identical almost to the older Forex games. They're just doing a casting a broader net and bringing these whales in. Right. But I do think that there was innovation. I mean, this hybrid nature of I'm going to put a very simple mechanic on top of Harry Casual like that that is oddly innovation. All right. Fine. Innovation. I think they're intertwined. Yes. I was a little disappointed. I'll be honest at this particular podcast because I think it didn't make sense what he was talking about. I don't think Discord is a solution. It's just going to perpetuate the problem. There's no innovation on gameplay that's going to happen because Discord is a new distribution channel.

I'm just saying that like it is just going to be the same situation as all these games are the same games that they were like 10 years ago in terms of the same mechanics that are monetizing these same gotcha energy power creep. All these same things are going to be the same thing making money of this small percentage and we're talking about millions of people in the US that actually spend money like [ __ ] drunken sailors on these games. That's the audience and that's what you're optimizing against. I actually think they're correct in until there is a new distribution model that allows new creative and innovation to flourish, we are stuck in the system that we are in today. Discord, what we talked about today, it's an ad platform. I don't know what that platform is as a place for new games to kind of flourish and live. I mean, we live through I was there at the beginning of mobile where I was selling Scrabble for $6.99 and then I had to go in front of Hasbro and be like, "Hey, uh, we're going to make more money if we take Scrabble for free." And, you know,

the CEO was like, "Are you [ __ ] kidding me? Like, what do you mean? What is freeto play?" That is because of the nature of the platform and because everything's an ad network, you have to go, you know, at scale. That's what this distribution model lent us. You know, if there is a new distribution model that pops up, I do think that would allow for innovation of gameplay to flourish depending on this is where this is what got me really kind of confused is I don't think it changes one thing. I don't think MOBAs are all of a sudden going to be successful on mobile in the west because we have new distribution mechanisms. I'm just saying in general the consumer that's spending money on these games like these lunatics that are spending tens of thousands of dollars are not spending it on MOBAs with cosmetic economies. Like that's just there there's not a broad group of people spending on freeto play to justify any type these type of gameplay mechanics that you're talking about, right? Or these new genres or new gameplay mechanics. That's just not the nature of the mobile uh free-to-play system period, right? regardless of distribution. Let's say Apple gets rid

of the 30%. Yeah. Right. At comes back, right? Because they get legisl Nothing's going to change. The point is that distribution affected what genre succeeded and which ones failed, right? That's our central point of disagreement. You think consumer preferences drive everything. And I would argue, yeah, that's that does drive a lot. But user acquisition is a really important part of finding an audience. And that helps give life to mechanics that would not otherwise exist because they can find an audience that is small enough when you have targeting. When you don't have targeting, this is your words, Eric. You remember you had to go casual. You had to go casual on the front end to get people into the funnel, right? So, it's harder to find. I'm not talking again. I'm talking about what's people are spending money on, not what people are downloading and playing. How would you explain the decline in squad RPG revenue? They're [ __ ] out these AAA bazillion dollar. We're talking about ZZ Miyo Zen. Yeah. No, no, but those are not here to the west. The collection mechanic type games. They haven't innovated on the games that have done well. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes

and Marvel Strikeforce. Like they there hasn't been a new game in that category that has taken to capture the hearts and minds of that audience. And I think a lot of those likely the spenders are all moving back to 4X is kind of what it looks like like those are capturing this the same maybe that same like whale audience. Isn't that because 4X is now adding character collections inside and so 4X is like the ultimate shout out hybrid? You know, it's like but seriously like when I was playing White Out Survival, I was like, "Oh my god, there is like old school squad RPG character collection involved in this just like everything else, just like the mini games. Just like like I felt like when I was playing White Out and it's been a while. I'm sure when we look at Kingshot and all these other like they are now shoving everything into these game experiences that keep you involved in collecting and continuing your collection. That's where I feel like there has been innovation and changes in gameplay because of the distribution model pushing that. I don't think we

love where it's going because it, you know, in a sense like we hate, you know, hyper casual because it was how do I get you to stay for 30 minutes so I can show you 10 ads and monetize you off platform which I think we as people that love games I think we felt gross about what that was. My whole thing is that because the whales constitute the majority of the revenue on the app store full stop. like it's the games and genres that cater to that audience despite whatever [ __ ] distribution mechanism that you have whether it's, you know, [ __ ] Discord or anything else that is going to will see success in the marketplace, right? So, you don't cater to that audience that's willing to spend $10,000 a year on a game like you're it's over. Okay. Well, two things. one is I think there are a lot of companies that made a lot of money on ads and we won't know that because sensor tower has you know that's not exactly what shows up however two what is going to change that we need to keep an eye on and I know you love and hate this topic is web shops as I

talk to more people that have mostly midcore games that mostly service the whales to exactly what you're saying those people are moving off platform to these web shops in some cases as you know we've all heard 40% of game revenue can come from a web shop that is no longer being tracked in what we are seeing in a sense on sensor tower. And so I'm actually wondering are we losing sight of actually what's really going on in the industry for that actually reinforces my point right because the people that are moving over are the whales that are spending insane amounts of money right and they're still sp spending on the same games that they spent on 10 years ago. Is that a distribution innovation? That's actually the opposite of innovation. That's like sticking with exactly the games that are doing well. Now, this is my point. It's like you have a new distribution mechanism that's not going to improve discovery and capture new audiences and capture new gameplay to the next. I mean, hyper casual is one example. Squatter RPG is another. The last one I'd probably put is like the failure of

the design home genre to launch I think could have been a sacrificial lamb of AT as well. Like I really thought design home in that genre would expand and I think at probably played a big role in stunting the success of products like redecor well no the LTVs were not high enough to justify the spend right you can always lower CPI lower CPI right I mean that's the other that's the flip side right that's that's what could have made this genre viable right if you can find an audience CPI can be lower and you can still hold LTP constant and your genre can persist that makes sense to me right is that if we did have ways of capturing those audienc audiences that are lower. Your assumption is that if without AT&T, we could have actually had lower CPIs to grow the design home audience. I think it's one example and it's speculation on my part. I think there's a million things on reticore we could talk about, but that's something I've always been curious is about why this genre didn't take off. It's a very particular market and I think we need highly targeted creative to be able to continue to have that genre really succeed and it hasn't. Right. It's been design home and design home's been kind

of on a decline for a really long time. I mean, isn't it exactly what you're saying is there's nothing to spend money on for whales in those kinds of games. There's a ton of things to spend money on. Not only you, you have e-commerce in those products, too, which is also a really nice back end. I would I would argue it the other way is like the depth of spend is not there to justify the spending to find these this audience, right? Yeah. Exactly. Versus spending the same amount of money and building the same type of game as a 4x game and capturing that audience, right? So the rorowaz calc is just not there for design home versus forex games. I'm interested in that as a topic because you would imagine that how do so many people spend so much money on stupid puzzle games which I am one of those people. I play the [ __ ] out of royal match and royal kingdom. I mean for me it's a fidget toy but how do people spend money on like more lives but not like I want to decorate my room? Is it because of the play pattern? Is it I don't know a more particular audience. Match three. Match three is a very I

mean people will use match three. They'll frontend their creative with match three. Like AFK Journey had a freaking match three game that you had to play when you downloaded a squad RPG, right? It's a much more broad appeal genre than Redcore or Design Home. Yeah. So then that's the problem again. And it goes to like there is no innovation on the platform cuz it's all going to the you know crest to what you're saying the top three things that are working on uh maybe we're all I don't know the whole yeah the whole point of targeting right just put aside mobile for a sec the whole revolution of Facebook was that you could do hyperargeted things which gave rise to like all these PCG companies that are making like you know you know particular shaving products or selling you razors whatever it may be but that wasn't necess necessarily a product of consumer preference. Obviously, the latent consumer preference was there else it wouldn't sell. There has to be demand at some point. But what unlocked that possibility was being able to find these particular audience because hyperargeting exists. We wouldn't have had all those PCG companies if we didn't

have Facebook. And I think you can make the same parallels stick here. Like there is a back and forth causal relationship between the two. All right, we got we got to [ __ ] wrap this up. All right, everyone. Hope you enjoyed our debate. Uh I think actually Mitch andor Blake is coming on a podcast with Mishka. I wish we could all be there. There's one more thing I got to rake these guys over the coals. They claim that Genchin normalized loot boxes in the west. I got I got a whole post coming on this. I'm not going to let them off the hook for now. That was circa 2012. Dude, that was like Dude, that was not like Genchin. You're right. Totally. It happened. When I was listening to them saying that, I physically stopped in the street with a gast. Don't me wrong, like it's on podcast, you say things. Let's be charitable. But I'm not going to let them go on that one unless they do a correction. If they do a correction next episode, all will be forgiven. All right. Well, Blake's in the Slack. Join the Deconstructor of Fun Slack channel and you can message Blake for sure and uh see what he says. All right, everybody. We will see you next week. You did it. You made it to the end of

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