TWIG #342 Scopely Meltdown, Crazy Anime Story and One SHOCKING Game Recipe

I'm just like baffled at each of your takes. I I really don't understand. Have you guys been living under a rock? Have you guys like been in mobile? Why is this like a Pikachu gasp moment? [Music] Using clunky payment systems in your game? That's like fighting a boss with a wooden sword. App Charge gives you the power up you need. Seamless inapp purchases, global payments, and analytics that don't require a PhD. Monetize smarter, not harder. App charge because your game deserves better loot.
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No, I He's in the third world. He's in Spain.
The third world. Oh, god. Great. We now

get hate mail from all of our Spanish listeners. All right. So, why don't you introduce yourselves? Crest, go first.
Eric, strategy investing. Uh, Phil Black Monization ZAR.
Oh, welcome. All right. And no Mishka. Okay. So, here's what we got going on today. Oh my god, so many articles on Sony suing Tencent. So, we'll get into that a little later. A lot of M&A activity. The Convoy report will help us go through the latest. Phil is going to stack rank all of Scop's games and we're going to talk about Monopoly Go's royalty reporting that came out from Hasbro. I plead the case for marketing to help at the very beginning of a go to market for startups. Here's looking at you hold outs from Ruckus. I have some feedback and apparently now we're going to do other people's corrections. Phil, this is aimed at you. Mishko had a big one, but I was like, okay, apparent I thought that was just what we do on the podcast is basically correct other people, but okay, we're going to do it in corrections. But first, I was trying

to check and see if we were going to cover the Nintendo Direct, which is going to actually it's coming out July 31st, which is tomorrow for us. We record on the 30th. It's the first of its name for Switch 2. And I say that because my wife and I are re-watching Game of Thrones, and so everything is like, you know, fancy, first of name, all of that type of [ __ ] So,
uh, bestselling console of all time apparently.
I mean, no [ __ ] though. really day and day in date. You know, no one cares, though. Same same old story.
Same old story.
Are we shocked by this?
I wouldn't say no one cares. I think the stock
Well, Nintendo shareholders do.
Yeah. Well, everyone I mean, you have to understand like all the video game names are almost at all-time highs right now on the publicly saturated side. Partly because of the anticipation of things like GTA, but also the success of the Switch and the engagement on IP and and games besides Ubisoft, of course,

all the Japanese companies are doing well. All the Western companies are too. You really think that's riding on the wave of the switch? What I'm suggesting is it's the battle of the big. The market stock market's also at all-time highs. So that helps as well. But the companies are performing well. EA just reported and take two reported. So anyway, we are looking
maybe we should talk about it today later in the news section.
Okay. All right. Let me do a couple of shills. Uh Mishka's been doing a lot of podcasts. So first is an article out in the newsletter. How to make celebrity endorsements actually work for your game. This is from Marian Beni offs who is a datadriven influencer marketing consultant. I actually did an a podcast with her a few months ago. It was called Beyond User Acquisition: How to Win with Influencer Marketing. Highly recommend it. She is a baller, so learned a lot from her. Another podcast, what happened to Coin Master after Monopoly Go and what happens next? Oh, it's an article.

Oh,
yeah. My bad. Uh, but Sam is new from Sensor Tower. He's doing like weekly updates and putting it in our Deconstructor Fun Slack channel, which I've been enjoying that. So, that has been a useful tip from our friends at Censor Tower. And then, did you listen to Mishka's podcast with all the UA people?
Yeah, I don't
actually, dude, did they call me out on that? I I could
I think he kind of did, but I thought it was an incorrect call out to be fair to you. I thought actually they were all very brilliant in their own ways and I thought it was actually really good in education. However, I still don't know whether Unity has a shot right now, right? Because that seems to be coming down to the fact can they mine the data from their customers in order to build a better product. That's what it all comes down to. One, I think person on the podcast believes that they will. The others are very skeptical because they've actually, you know, have dealt with Unity for a long time and

they've been making this promise since the IPO. So, it's like I'm still at a loss. We'll get some indication, I guess, from their their earnings call.
Yeah, this is in reference to Vector, which is Unity's new service that goes up against Axon 2, which is the service from Apploven. And so basically it was a bit of a love fest for apploven and them kind of describing why apploven is just crushing it in the UA front. I loved how they just steamrolled Mishka and it was like the three guys just talking the whole time and Mishka in the background saying uh you you guys lost me. You lost me again.
Yeah, it was funny. That was funny.
It was pretty funny. But it was really really informative. Like all three guys absolutely know their stuff.
Yeah, they're all brilliant. Yeah, absolutely brilliant.
And then what was this? Another article. The truth about startup life. Oh, this was a podcast with Joseph Kim. Oh my god, this is hard to listen to actually.
It really was. So, Joseph Kim, former deconstructor of fun, you know, OG, I

guess. He was the original on the podcast with Mishka. He's always, you know, been in and out of a universe here. And they kind of asked each other questions and went deeper into a little bit more of the personal side of things. And you know, one of the quotes is from from crying alone in India to panic attacks at Gamescom. Both of them were sharing their uh their mental health challenges. I think any any takeaways from that one, Chris, you've known JK the longest.
I think JK is is a very uh interesting person and he's gone through hell and back with the startup in in India. So, I hope he gets his game out. I hope he has some success, but it has been labor of love. It's been painful.
Yeah. He reminds me of those movies where you got the the religious people who are like flogging themselves on the back.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I think at one point he was like, "I believe in suffering." I think was what he said. I was like, "Oh, okay.
I don't think he's wrong. I don't think he's wrong. I think there's something to it. Lessons not learned in blood are

easily forgotten. There's a rhyme to it."
You know, Angela Duckworth has this book called Grit. It's the psychology of like what makes people really successful. And I think that there is a way you can do these things without completely going into the suffering mode. I think you Anyway, I felt bad for him when he's like, I haven't talked to my child or my wife in a month.
And that's where I was like, I don't think I can do that.
Yeah, he sacrificed a lot. Let's say that.
Yeah, absolutely. And there's no right or wrong way. Uh, all right. Gamescom parties. The heroic party is o over 700 signups. Misa says the best party. Uh, whiskey and water tasting is at 180 signups. Keep making a little bit more intimate. I don't know if 180 is more intimate, but okay. Mishka, follow the newsletter. You know, if we haven't said this, go to deconstructorfund.com. You sign up, you get into the Slack, you get the newsletter. Sign up there. Okay, final shill. Our YouTube channel. So, our editor Dom has been doing God's work

with all of the shorts. So, he takes clips, he puts funny pictures with them. I see it all over, you know, my YouTube when I'm at home trying to watch things. And my wife's like, "Why are you on our YouTube channel?" And I'm like, "Oh, the algorithm." So, if you're not in the mood for the full podcast, you can get clips on YouTube and hit that subscribe button and the like buttons because it really helps us out. It helps other people find us. All right, Phil, I'm going to throw it to you for your correction, not a correction. So many months ago, maybe even like years ago, we checked in on the world of like behavioral economics, a certain type of cancer in my view. And two of the most prominent professors were under academic investigation. One of them out of Harvard has, I believe she's now given up her case or she's been removed from Harvard, so she's done those. Dan still teaches at Duke, which I think it's crazy that he's had no repercussions. Again, these are psychologists, not economists. There's a lot of junk psychology that's come out and one of them recently tried to use a

justification for how much the US economy has been, you know, um, how much has been sacrificed due to addiction. And so the way they argue for this is that they say that, oh my god, we're going to look at these free-to-play currency packages and we're going to estimate based on how much people consumed whether or not they could have bought a better free-to-play package. Because as you know, free-to-play packages sometimes will give you quantity discounts as you purchase more. And so they're basically using this like Xanti analysis to say like, oh, you could have saved money if you had bought a much higher skew. Now, obviously, we know this is a really really silly way to or derive this analysis. Like there's a variety of reasons people don't buy $100 SKUs, even Xanti, like they might have uncertainty about their future preferences. But there's like a very important paper here and I think it's an important point here that comes from an economics paper and I think gaming PMs in particular need to know and it's from this Glenn Howard paper in 1992 called theory and misbehavior in firstp price auctions. Now it's a part of like this really nerdy economics debate. But what

he shows in this paper is that when you're running experiments you really need to bend the payoff curve. And so for instance in this experiment where they were trying to look at optimal spend there was a very small penalty to buying the right skew. So but that quantity discount you got by spending larger amounts of money only resulted in very little in terms of the nominal savings. Like you only save something like $5 by making the perfect decisions about knowing your future consumption patterns. And so it's really really important to bend that payoff curve. And so if you're a PM thinking about experiments, you can't just do things that are only 1% different. You need to do things that are 20, 30, 40, 50% difference. You really need to bend that payoff curve when you're trying to measure or test the effect of something. And we've known this in economics for a really long time. So again, this is one of the reasons like changing the color of buttons is not bending the payoff curve any degree. You need to go much deeper and try to cover much bigger surface area.

Dude, will you stop with this micro economics crap, dude? You're going to give me stress dreams. This is like college again.
How is this? How is the stress dreams? This is what we do, Eric.
Different points in the
No, I'm not saying that. No, no, no. I'm saying that if you're going to run that test though, you want to bend the payoff curve. I mean, exactly to this point though was that King Levit paper, Mr. Freconomics, Steve Levit, where they ran on discounting Candy Crusher packages as much as 80% changing that discounts at different points in the no. I'm saying that if you're going to run that test though, you want to bend the payoff curve. I mean, exactly to this point though was that King Levit paper, Mr. Freconomics, Steve Levit, where they ran on discounting Candy Crush packages as much as 80%. Changing that quantity discount. But see, that was testing over a very wide range. And so that is where you're likely to get bigger effects. That's really testing the effect of something rather than this one 2 3% change. You really want to bend that payoff curve. I don't know what you

when you say bend the payoff curve then.
So like for exactly as you mentioned though like if you want to offer these really big quantity discounts, you're really bending the payoff curve. You're really changing the costbenefit analysis of let's say buying a $100 skew versus buying a $1 skew because I'm going to need to consume the currency that's in that $100 skew. So I need to understand my future playing patterns to do that. So I feel like Candy Crush, I buy a bunch of gold bars and I consume those gold bars at a certain rate. It may take me 30 days to get rid of that $100 I spent. And I say get rid of, but just consume it before I reup. I'm signing up. I'm expecting that I'm going to spend that much time in the game. So, I have to project my future time horizon. And so, if you bend that payoff curve, if you make it a really big discount to spending $100, that's really bending the payoff curve to see whether or not there's an effect here rather than just saying, "Oh, we're going to test like changing the quantity discount on the $100 skew one or 2%." Really crank it. Why is that not what I said, which is give a bigger discount for the bigger

purchases that you might have?
I'm just not necessarily saying I don't know if that's the right answer, but that's at least how I would test the theory. I'm more into the methodology here rather than the conclusion.
Fine. Got it. Okay.
All right. I guess Candy Crush is uh launching an official dessert cookbook. Candy Crush is bringing its Candycoated world to the kitchen with an official dessert cookbook. Tasty, the official Candy Crush dessert book. It launches on October 7th and is now available for pre-order on Amazon. And you of course said
trans media at its finest, dude. They have exhausted every single angle at this point. Like this is
come on. I mean, this is ridiculous, right? Like
good. Well, and then I of course was like, I did this. So, back in my Farmville days in 2014, I did a Farmville digital cookbook. We got Kate Hudson. We got Who is this other famous Mark Murphy? And we actually got recipes

from the community. So, we went around
Kate Hudson. Oh, I really want to know what was behind the Kate Hudson decision. What was she coming off of in her career? Was this like Kate's because she's like a mobile gamer type like phenom, right? I've seen I've seen her on others.
Yeah.
By the way, have you heard they're trying to bring back Sydney Sweeney for uh some of those mobile Game of War ads? Have you
That would be good gaming lore. All right. Sorry. Continue.
So, the Kate Hudson was um we're doing the demographic psychoraphic of our audience. She is the celebrity that the audience most liked. And number two, she was launching a wine brand. And number three is she's a chef. And so we reached out to her for a very very very small amount of money, like not at all what we talk about with the other folks. So we actually did a a cartoon version for her. We put her in the game. We put her wine in the game and then we got her to give us a recipe for the cookbook. And so for almost no

money, we made this cookbook. Like it was literally like peanuts. And it took us like one week of an engineer to make an SDK that we put up online in the cooking section in the app stores. And so the idea was that we were going to growth hack and we were going to have links to the game if you went and you downloaded the cookbook and vice versa. And so we actually did a couple hundred thousand downloads. I'm kind of fuzzy on all of the exact installs that we did, but it was just at the time when you know we were trying to figure out how to growth hack a game that had been out for over 5 years and we were just playing around with something kind of fun. It was great for the community. I think we actually did a real version of this for some of the fans.
I love how you guys abused each other like Like you put Kate Hudson in the game and in return she put her own wine brand and
Yes. Well, I I paid her a little bit of money because when you ever you do a celebrity sponsorship, you you know, you do have to actually pay them some money, but it's nothing like the collabs in this day and age, which is, you know, millions of dollars.
Yeah.
So, what was the quantifiable return on

invest ad spend on this one? Well, because we were able to get for almost no money hund hundreds of like anybody that hadn't downloaded Candy Crush, they were [ __ ] loading Candy Crush up after this [ __ ] [ __ ] right? Come on.
I'm telling you, we got hundreds of thousands of installs we attributed to the cooking app.
Yeah. And and they probably drove like literally negative revenue at this point.
I disagree with that, but there you go. So, anyway, Mishka was [ __ ] on me as well. All I can say is like when you get to the end of the life cycle, you will start to try anything in the growth hacking and I was proud of us for spending almost money to pull that off. Anyway, all right, let's talk about the Convoy Report and how private equity is taking over everything. Not
Oh my god, I I I read Mishka's notes on this and I just kind of throw up my mouth a little bit. All right, so the convoy report came out and I'll be honest, these guys usually are much more timely than this because this is through

the end of June. It's like a month later. I think something happened. I actually reached out to them because I wanted to cover this because I think they do a really really good job of summarizing the market. Although for this time they didn't do dollar M&A for some reason. But anyway, the first chart basically shows actual and projected uh revenue from the gaming market. basically suggesting that the market is almost half of the market growth that we've seen over the last like what I think 20 years which is kind of the situation that we're in is on a macro level the challenges that we're seeing in the gaming space in general is that revenue growth is is declined precipitously after IDFA and just level maturity of both console mobile so this is like really really important dynamic and so he does a good job of articulating that
this is 0% like real growth factor in inflation. This is zero. This is stagflation.
Yeah, but you could probably say that for the 5.6%, right?
I don't know exactly what time horizon that five 5.6%.

Yeah, it actually that is actually a little bit low. It should be much higher than that to be honest because I think it should be in the 10% range.
I think going from 2020 to still that's still flat. It's a flat industry basically on on real
2020 2001. Well, even on a like forward-looking basis from 2025 to 20 30 once you factor in inflation like Yeah, that's that's flat. I mean, that's that's like not good. Like that's the headline. Like gaming flat.
Yeah. Exactly.
But we've had the revolution of rising expectations in this industry for so long.
For so long we've had that.
I was talking to someone yesterday about this. It's like, you know, the majority of people in the industry have come in during mobile, right? Like gaming was very, very small when it was just PC console, right?
We did, right? All of us, right? Didn't all of us come in through mobile too? No. Me? No. I We were way before. Oh,
geez.
Anyway, so no one everyone's been in this environment that's been growing at 10 to 15 to 20% a year for the last

decade or 15 years, you know, and we are just not in that spot anymore. And that is a different environment for gaming. So this again, Convoy does a really good job of articulating that. And so because of this interest from the VC community has declined to like basically almost nothing. So the funding is down to an all-time low right on early stage and growth for that matter. Like this is like a crazy low number in Q2. Q1 didn't look too bad. You know, it looked like things were coming up a little bit and I bet that had to do with a lot of the investments that were going on in Turkey. But this is a low [ __ ] number, right? And this is this is not even like 2023 and 2024 weren't great. It's 2021 and 2022 were where things were [ __ ] to the moon, right? Like this is on a low base, you know? So I guess the only good news here is that we only hopefully only can go up from here. But I don't know the funding environment is tough as everyone said. So this does a good job of articulating that.
You really need to think about what the

time series is here. So it is true like looking quarter over quarter it looks really bad. It looks the worst on record, honestly, that I see on this chart, but you're still only looking until, you know, from 2023. You know, we have 2022 and 2021 here, but I mean, part of the other pattern is VC investing is still relatively new into games, right? Like, I mean, we are thinking about like 20-year time horizons. Where do we fit it in in that context rather than just this blip quarter over quarter?
Okay, look, the chart says 2021 was the highest at 10 billion, right? 2022 was 7 billion. 2023 was 2.3 billion. 2024 was two billion and we're on track to one billion in 2025.
So it's one10enth.
I know, but you got to look at pre- pandemic. Like preandemic it grew like this.
It was Yeah, it was still growing up to to spike at the pandemic. So this this to me has been the mystery that I haven't seen answered is why we had such

poor retention coming out of the pandemic like as an industry
because people went outside.
I I I I understand this, but you're telling me we didn't get like jack [ __ ] [ __ ] out of this. Like if you just draw the lines, we basically just like had this like accelerated period and then we were back to our long run growth curve. Well, it was basically back what I was saying back then was that VC investments in console PC never made sense to begin with, right? It's not the type of business for console PC, right? And on top of that, what we said back then was that mobile with IDFA basically they cut them at the knees in terms of growth or profitable growth anyway when they removed the ability to target an attribute, right? So that growth was just completely just destroyed by Apple to some degree. Right now we're in an improvement situation right now with with basically you know fingerprinting as a proxy but like nonetheless like that just destroyed like the growth vector and so like VCs are looking at that like dude there's no

investment that makes sense in this environment right
who says yes private equity.
Oh jeez equity [ __ ] is got to stop. It's got to stop.
66% Eric.
Oh yeah. 25 6225.
How many times have you
$691?
So, so the fundamental problem with looking at private equity is it's so dealbased. It's not it's not a volume based. It's like this transaction size based. So, you hear see these huge spikes, right, for these things because these big deals get done, but they're very very very very specific. So, private equity is not taking over venture capital in this space. There are not a lot of mature businesses that make sense for private equity and private investments into a publicly traded company should not be included either. I don't think I'll have to talk to him about that. But anyway, look, there's no there there here that's not taking over. We continue to be in a very very very very tough environment for funding and anybody that's out there trying to raise money and I've talked to many of them

over the last few months will tell you that very specifically. And we still haven't heard about what the [ __ ] is happening with believer, right?
Oh yeah.
Yeah. Like that
supposedly they got saved, but I don't know, man. Like
I think it's easy. I just go to LinkedIn and see like if they have any open to work tags. I mean it sounds it sounds morbid, but
And then on a positive side, the last chart was about the layoffs on 2025. It looks like it's on track to be below the peak which I think was
I think it's 2023.
Yeah,
makes sense. I mean they just this is just kind of getting an adjustment mode rep prioritization etc etc. All right, that's it. I mean
well hold on. We got one we got one for Blake. Blake and Mitch here.
VC funding by category. Okay, first of all, again,
it's a subcategory. It's regional, but 79% of VC funding into

gaming companies categorized as content, 21% into tech and platforms.
Yeah. Again, you can make a conclusion based upon a very small
subset of the investment side of it. But
y
yeah, content is always king, right? I mean, look, I've been saying this a long time, but like investing in tech in gaming is a very, very tough thing. But not many of those companies actually end up becoming profitable companies. They get acquired maybe, right? But it's not like Unity and Epic have never made a [ __ ] nickel on their engines and they're ubiquitous, right? It's like it's it's a tough business.
No tech company can seem to win in gaming and yet no gaming company can seem to win in tech. Uh, we haven't acknowledged the the mutual side of this.
I wonder what does adtech fit into this at all? Because that's the one I think that can jump a shark, so to speak. Well, actually jump
whatever the positive of that is.
But see, all the non-game people are capturing all the value of that, right?

Like Meta Meta owns us. Like
they just they're like vampires, but also good vampires. They pump blood and life. But yeah, it's weird. like Apploving, right? Like Apploving, remember we we've talked about how they're just running away with it and their stock price is up, the valuation.
Yeah, but but again, that's not gaming tech. That's correct.
AD tech.
Correct. That's why I was wondering if they count that kind of tech in this tech or if this is more like
Yeah.
You know, AI blah blah and then
Yeah. AI AI. Yeah. Like
AI blah blah blah. Engines, you know, like whatever.
Cool. All right. All right.
Anything else on that one?
All right. So you want to do uh Sony and
this is a quick one. So Sony Group Corporation again this is not Sony entertainment necessarily. This is the entire company. So that's actually important thing to understand. They've acquired a 2.5 stake in Bandai Namco for about 500 million. And so basically what this does is cement the relationship with Bandai Namco for access to their

IP, but it also includes movies and television and toys and hobbies and etc. Right? So, it's basically creating more of a strategic relationship between the two companies. And just so you know, they have Dragon Ball, Mobile Suit, Gundam, Tekken, and One Piece is like kind of their big IPs. And so this the context here is that basically this is how Sony is kind of outmaneuvering Microsoft, right? Because of Microsoft strategy, they're kind of stuck where they can't do these type of deals because they're trying to build their own [ __ ] right? rather than having establishing relationships with other companies and establishing an IP pipeline for not only their gaming but for other parts of their business. Right? So Microsoft or Xbox could be competing for the same type of deals or the further their portfolio strategy, media strategy, but they can't because they're stuck within Microsoft. This is just one of those type of examples. That's why I thought of it when I when I looked at it. Right. Um now, of course, there's a Japanese angle here. So like it's likely kind of a Japanese company probably prohibits like western companies from doing this particular

deal. But again
what it does is it secures most favored nation status for Sony and indefinitely basically for all of their IP which is a really good thing for Sony both from a company perspective as well as from a gaming perspective if that makes sense.
If anyone can solve Gundam I hopefully hopefully it'll be hopefully it'll be Sony. This is should be a flagship property and the fact that there is not one there's not a flagship mobile squad RPG for Gundam or one on PC console is an embarrassment. Like Bandai Namco is still making money on this franchise from arcades. Yes, arcades and like these weird Dynasty Warrior games. There was a a hero shooter they did a firsterson hero shooter. It's Gundam. You're in a mobile suit. You want to be third person. They did a Overwatch style shooter. They've done this weird arcade card game. They did the Dynasty Warriors thing I mentioned. I mean, just like very strange approach to this franchise. Just I will work on this for free. Just give me a call. I will absolutely do it. But there's this franchise could be much

bigger. Like we talk about Trans Media all the time. Are you kidding me? It's giant robots. We were just talking about Mecca Break a couple weeks ago that unfortunately has faded. Its progression systems were non-existent. They like gutted all the monization. I really wanted to cover it, but there's just nothing there in terms of in terms of customization. But man, this should this should be a layup. And it's just disappointing it's not. And and I hope Sony can do something with this.
I worked a lot with Bandai back in the day. They owned Power Rangers when I worked on Power Rangers for five years. And obviously I know Gundam and Dragon Ball. The challenge with these is even though anime has its popularity in the US a little bit, they don't break through into the mass numbers, which is why you've in a sense never seen it be successful. Just like for the co-productions that, you know, Wild Rift has where, you know, you have a team in the US and the team in China or uh Blizzard does Diablo Immortal where there's some, you know, kind of east and west collaboration, it's too Japanese. And unless you get a little bit more Western help on that, you're you're just not going to

I think Netflix and One Piece, right? I think there's something there. You have to try to unlock something with that.
Yeah. No, I think One Piece for sure. I mean, we talked about this before that on Roblox like Block Fruits, one of the biggest games is a ripoff of One Piece and finding a huge amount of success. Like anime is really, you know, starting to find its way, especially to share with the class.
Hold on. Are you suggesting that anime is not mainstream in America? Is that what you're suggesting, Miss Jeno? I mean, those are fighting words.
No, I'm suggesting some of it, like Gundam, it has not been able to bridge the gap. I am suggesting that yes, One Piece has been able to and when I look at you know what collaboration should different kinds of brands do some of the top IP that comes up or anime in terms of like what collaboration can lead into the best things. All right.
What I what I'm saying is to truly launch a brand without a collaboration itself, you need a little bit more western impact to help those brands.

That's why Gundam hasn't worked.
Okay. At the risk of getting my ass kicked by Miss Alex
Alex Decay.
Yes, Miss Alex Decay, who I love dearly. Um,
I went to a anime convention this week, last weekend with my children.
Why didn't you Why are you buried there? Why?
I just I totally forgot about it.
Start the episode on your cosplay.
Oh my god, dude. If you think ComicCon is bad, an anime convention is 10 times worse, right? like these are the biggest shutin nerds I've ever seen in my goddamn life. It was crazy and it's such obscure [ __ ] that they are dealing with, right? So, I was blown away. And not to mention, I felt like a [ __ ] creep, right? Cuz I am like literally 30 years older than the average person in that room and I'm walking around and I wanted to take pictures of this [ __ ] but then I thought I'd get [ __ ] arrested for anyway. So,

I do think that if if you are going to create anime to be mainstream, it has to have trans media in it, right? So, here's where trans media makes sense, right? In order to bring this to the masses in the US, yes, make One Piece thing on Netflix, make it, you know, relevant, right? But at the end of the day, this is like super dorky nerdy stuff and it's very, very young. And so maybe these kids grow up and they want to like h interface with these worlds and these characters. But I think these are the type of things that people grow out of, not grow into. You know what I mean? So, and maybe that's cuz I'm old, right? Maybe. I don't [ __ ] know, dude. But I was walking around this place just my jaw to the floor about like how dorky this [ __ ] is.
You're showing your own point is incorrect, right? Because this didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago, these conventions. I mean, this has been growing. I mean, look at the number of ramen shops that existed where you are right now in Orange County, Eric, right now. Orange County, first of all,
where are ramen shops have to do with

anime, dude?
So, I'm thinking there's been a broader move towards like Japanese culture that I think is reflected in that notion. You see it everywhere. What do you It's everywhere, Eric.
Dude, I live in San Francisco, dude. Japanese We've had Japan Town for like hundred years.
I can tell you here in Stockholm, that's certainly been the case. Well, that's my point is when I look at brands that are looking to do collaborations, when you start to see anime as some of the top brands to do a collaboration with, that is new news and that is showing the power of anime growing. However, you aren't seeing the power of those IPs growing for individual game launches. And so that's the difference is they can't maintain their own products, but they are highly soughta by the audiences for like brand collaborations and things like that. You've seen it in Overwatch. You've seen it in in Fortnite. You've seen it in Roblox. You know, these brands are starting to get more in a sense attention because of the internet, because of the the conventions

and yes, and Netflix. I think your broad point is very astute though, Jen, is like none of these have really broken through on a mainstream level. Like this is not Disney level IP yet. I think it's primed for that. I think there should be someone who's ready to deliver this. I think someone can deliver these Japanese IPs
to the level of Disney for sure. I think that is 100% doable.
Hero Academy, right? Another one of them that's like
it's not going to be mainstream. They need to westernize this type of said,
right? But but yeah, but that is a completely different argument than people suggesting that the anime as it is in Japan is making huge tractions in the west. It's not. It has to be modified for the western markets to be successful. And it's not even [ __ ] anime anymore is what I'm saying. Like you go to these [ __ ] conventions and these people are looking at things that have no resemblance to western type content at all. Nutty. Anyway, all right.
Okay. So, Alex, yes. there's nothing to be you know she should be offended about about our conversation because I think her point was back when we talked about

this a long time ago is it's not all exploitative there are various kinds that reflect various kinds of social and economic and different you know type of taste and all of them are finding a different place coming over but none of them are as mainstream as we would love them to be yet. Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love. But integrating metagame features like challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Clabs. 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 her today at heroiclabs.com.
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Craftton on the prowl. We ain't done yet.
Okay, so Craftton um acquired 100% of the US-based company 11th hour games for $96 million. I think the only thing that that makes this interesting is that they're on this like, you know, the Subnotica fiasco is still like hot news and they're they're still acquiring studios. So, Grav is still getting really aggressive out there on collecting studios. They made this game called Last Epoch, which came out in 2024. I don't think it did particularly well, but it did reasonably well. This feels almost like an Aqua Hire with a little bit of like, you know, juice. Ucent was an early investment in this

company, I believe. So, anyway, I think this just creates another game team for them to build content for the West and East. I guess it's interesting that they're doing deals. People are still wanting to work with Craftton, I guess.
Not only that, like great exit, 100 million. Cool to see exits like this, you know, not quite 100 million. I would have really liked to see the founders just push for the number just for just for the headline. I can't get that [ __ ] done.
But that was great. Not only that, this was a US-based company. And Eric, you always go back on, you know, these Asian companies, we can't acquire them. They can seem to acquire us. But again, that's a benefit to us that they can acquire US-based companies. So again, we just got another hund00 million from South Korea because they acquired a US company, which is awesome.
Well, actually that no, that is not correct statement at all, right? Yes, it benefits the few, but now that they own more of our industry, that's not good either, right?
It's not our industry. It's just capital flows, right? They still have maintained capital investment here in the United States with this developer. Like 11th

Hour Games, maybe they're going to scale up and they're going to get even more access to capital. Did you just read that 10 cent was starting to divest from some of the western companies? I thought I saw a glimmer of that when I was doing my research, but did you guys see that?
I don't think I don't know. I don't think 10 cents made any really aggressive moves. I mean, obviously Netis and Net Marble are starting to divest everything basically.
Okay. News from Mobile Gamer Biz from our friend Mr. Neil Long about some money that Hasbro is earning from Monopoly Go, which is interesting in and of itself. They expect to earn Hasbboro 14 million a month from the game through the end of fiscal year 2025 which I think gives you a nice sense of what life is like as a license or sitting back earning the royalty fees which is great for Hasbro but this is also a chance for us to like just check back in on the scope portfolio and due to my new sensor tower R package which I didn't get to show last week check it out on GitHub which I put together I was able

to pull all of Scop's games and we can kind of look at them year-to- date from 2023, 2024 and 2025 and this graph when you look at their portfolio across their key titles I think has a number of interesting stories about where Scopely has been. The first one that really jumps out at you is that they are down in nearly every single game and every single KPI. So topline revenue year-to- date from 2024 to 2025 is down 28%. Average MAU is down 24%. And downloads are down 34%. So even when we think about like ads and web shops, some of those usual arguments we hear and those are nice like those those are nice margins to take, but that should be reflected in downloads and average MAU if it was compensating for that because you would be bidding on UA at a consistent level and we don't see that be the case here or LTBS would be higher. So the fact we don't see that is troubling. The only franchise that has had any like like meager amount of growth at scale is uh excuse me, Pokemon Go at 2%. But Monopoly Go is down 36%

year-to- date, year-over-year. So, in 2024, they had made 1.1 billion by now, and 2025, they've only made 700 million by now. It is also around 60 to 65% of the portfolio revenue. So, like when this thing sneezes, Scopi is going to catch a cold. It's just the reality here. Pokemon Go is now suddenly the number two title in their portfolio at 200 $250 million. I mean that is basically their portfolio now. 90 what 90 92% of their revenue is Monopoly Go and Pokémon Go. Like everything else just became irrelevant. And so when you go through portfolio you look at like all these source spots these bets that you thought were going to pay out. Like Stumble Guys, remember they bought that from that small finish team. It's just declined. It's declined across every single KPI. It looks a downward pointing arrow. Star Trek Fleet Command has really collapsed. That was really tough to watch here. It's only made $22 million up until now in 2025.

In 2024, it had done $28 million. And a year before that, it was at $43 million. So, it's not looking like it's in a great place. And again, I understand web shops, people on the PC skew, but it's still I, you know, I'd expect to see more changes in MAU and downloads that would be more consistent with that. You look at Garden Joy, you remember that? That was one of their acquisitions. I think it was was Burlington Games. Uh, you know, they gave them money. That hasn't really turned into anything. Scrabble Go. It felt like that was a layup, right? We're going after the Zinga property, right? Like, we're going to go after that with the Scrabble franchise. I mean, that sounds like a layup that didn't end up turning into anything.
Yeah. Don't get me started. Scrabble has never been able to beat Words with Friends, sadly, as somebody who made the original OG Scrabble game. Yeah, Scrabble's a tough one.
And from what I understand, like they tried to scale Strikeforce and it really didn't play the way they expected it to and it's really hit all-time lows. The franchise is really struggling right now. It's still their number three game

surprisingly. And just one last shout out to Yatsi with Buddies, Walter, the CEO's favorite game of all time, which continues to deliver like steady revenue, like 24 million. Like what is it going to do? Maybe 50 million on AP this this year. You know, you add in ad revenue. That's Wow. Those 60-year-old women in Iowa playing these casual games are there's always more of them. Yeah.
And it's it's the best argument for pay to win that's ever been made is in Yatsu with Buddies, a formula that goes like underexamined. You literally just buy bonus rolls. You're literally buying win percentage.
Yeah. Yeah.
Same thing for match three games.
Uh but this remember this is also PvP. You be pulling against other people. Technically, you are as well in match three games.
Nope. Nope. It's a PvE environment. Nope. Sorry, Jen.
I mean, I do. I I'm in all kinds of clan battles.
Sure. There's lava quests. There's meta layers. I mean, sure, but all that's usually bots, too, at this point.

No, I got it.
Okay. I have a few comments. one the only adjustment I would make to this is like likely they're thinking of it Pokemon Go is incremental revenue for this year because it's inorganic growth right because it's an acquisition so in that way they can say to their Saudi you know overlords that the business isn't as bad as you're suggesting right does that make sense Phil
yeah you can just say look at we bought a revenue stream and then we add it to the money and we make more money see happy
yeah yeah exactly That's not a very compelling argument.
I know. I know. But that's what inorganic growth means really, right? So the other part of this is that I people are kind of blowing this thing up is that Hasbro suggested that they're making basically equal royalties for this year 14 million a month, right, for the rest of the year suggesting that they're kind of like stable revenue on Monopoly Go. That is not the case, right? Monopoly Go is down. is down significantly despite the

success on the stores outside of the app stores, but they are likely more profitable because they're spending far less money on UA. And that's why the royalty for Hasbro can be at that the same range for the rest of the year. I just want to be clear on this point. And despite all the money they're they're blowing on TV ads for no [ __ ] reason, you know, they're still more profitable because the UA spend was so insane for this game, like 500 million. Like, I don't know. I wonder what the number is for the full year of launch. I mean it must have been insane. I think it's 500 for the first leader and probably more than 500 for the next. I don't know
once that UA spend became unprofitable they spent less right and so I I likely that Hasbbo is making money on the margin not necessarily on the revenue per se. So there we go. But overall I think they need to get buy more product or make more product. One of the two right you know like keep the growth going the story going. I mean, Monopoly Go is so huge that like it is really really hard to grow from that level, right? So,

yeah, I mean, we are seeing just a change in tactics based off of the life cycle. It kind of went goes back to the beginning of our chat when I was talking about Farmville. When you're on a game that's been out for multiple years, you you start to have to change your tactics. And so what they're doing is, you know, trying to maintain their existing players, trying to launch new features and events to keep everyone inside the game so they don't have to keep acquiring new people. And they're trying to move their spenders to the Tycoon Club web shop, which if I don't know if you've done it, is a very seamless experience inside of the app where you get loyalty reward points for spending through that version of the web shop and not the main one. And I think, you know, we all know that we've heard between 20 and 50% of purchases have been moving to web shops, depending on the game. We don't know what it is on Monopoly Go. It does seem like it's starting to edge up to be kind of a higher percentage of that. I think a lot of it, Crest, to your point, is that they used to have to do marketing

deductions. Yeah.
Depending on UA spend, right? And so to your point, if UA spend is coming down, they are spending on TV and other places. That's not going to be to the same amount, then those deductions go down, which could also mean more margin for Hasbro. So I agree with you likely that is starting to be the case that you you're getting more margin on the web shops. There's less UA to take a deduction on and you know, so that I think that's part of the answer.
Their effective rate's going up. Their effective royalty rate is going up. Yeah, I'm agreeing with you on on that point. And then for for the next thing for you to [ __ ] on, they they've started their next kind of TV and and by the way, when their TV campaigns aren't necessarily TV campaigns, they're 360 marketing campaigns that happen to have a TV spot, but a majority of this is building new UA creative that goes out on traditional UA channels. You know, as a reminder, what they've told me, what

Ben said is that for the last campaign, nine of the 10 talk creative six months later were from these type of experiences. And so, it's just it's a way to get brand new refresh creative to try to get a new audience. They're doing a '9s sitcom theme, which, you know, it tells you who the consumer is. It's people who have nostalgia for 90s. So, anyway, that's my wrap up on Monopoly. Awesome.
We have a major piece of news from Andrew Wilson himself. He now gives a [ __ ] about mobile.
No, he didn't say that.
Not.
All right, let's let's talk about EA's quarterly earnings before before we break it down. They reported their net bookings by platform. To be honest with you, there's nothing too exciting here. It just kind of I don't I don't know where the stock price is really coming from, Eric. I mean, is there any deeper insight here? their their actual numbers here in terms of net bookings by platform looks uninspiring. It looks

marginal at best.
At the end of the day, like they've been just basically banking on FIFA for like the last decade, right? That's the only thing that's been a good story for them. Obviously, uh
college football
college football did really well. Yeah, we were talking about that dual skew that made a [ __ ] ton of money. Like the skew itself was one of the top selling like not just the individual games, but the dual skew. But there was another big bright spot and it was EA Sports FC Mobile Soccer. It's up in terms of downloads and revenue. They've been running this product forever. They do the seasonal updates if you remember, which is why we have a time series from Sensor Tower that stretches all the way back to 2017. You can really really clock the different eras of EA through this. And it is reaching all-time highs. I mean, don't me wrong, there were some highs in in January 2023, but it's steady state in terms of downloads and revenue. I've never been healthier. It's doing around it looks like 20 million looks like 20 million a month which is extremely healthy. And Andrew Wilson says it had over 50 million installs and its DA growth year-over-year was

impressive underscoring their ability to scale live content effectively.
Got it.
I mean, I [ __ ] hate the spin. I just [ __ ] hate the spin on this [ __ ] right? They've been [ __ ] this game up for the last like decade. like how could you [ __ ] this up as much as they [ __ ] it up in Vancouver, right? They like tried to maintain control of Vancouver and Redwood Shores and it didn't [ __ ] work because they don't understand the mentality of mobile gaming at all, right? And so they basically export this [ __ ] out to the Chinese group and they're the ones that are [ __ ] crushing it, you know? So, let me just say the team in China knows what the [ __ ] they're doing, right? The team in Revit Shores put all the people that are actually working on this FIFA game in China and they're the ones that have basically effectively monetized this thing that should have been monetized a decade ago, right?
Oh, you mean the the FC Sports game. The the increases we're seeing. Oh, it's okay. Because the other game here that I want to talk about was FC Sports Empire,
which is another game.

This is more like it, right?
Yes. So, this is one that's out of China. And I mean, the thing that's frustrated me is they've had this foot like RPG system, FIFA Ultimate, this ultimate team system, and they haven't really scaled it outside of this framework. Like, there's no reason you can't build games or squad RPGs or a million different things with kind of this framework or even just literally using the FUT marketplace as like a a centerpiece. This really could have been web 3 before Web 3. And so, this sports FC is building the normal free-to-play builder mechanics around that FUT process. So, if you look at the screenshot here, you're like building your club store. You have a quest system. You have uh, you know, a power score. You have characters that you're collecting. Just like in the Squad RPG, you're training them up. Like, it's basically the normal foot experience, but without the real time aspect, which I think there's a massive opportunity to capitalize on. I'm just surprised they haven't done it sooner. From what I understand from talking with someone is that this game is about to get canned, which would like break my heart,

especially if like the mobile game is doing really well. I don't know why you would poo poo the spin-offs. I thought this is the right direction for the franchise. Like how was they going to grow? What is left? Like they got Battlefield to squeeze more out of. They tried to squeeze out of Apex and it blew up in their face. Like what what is left?
Yeah. First of all, these guys have not executed at all, right? In terms of outside of of sports franchises, right? And you know, Apex did really well for a while, but that's kind of fallen off the fall off the so they've been living on sports and primarily FIFA. And that's why the stock took a big hit because FIFA was down last year because of some snafu with with the game development. Anyway, that seems to be solved and fixed and they seem to be fine on that. What I think people are hoping for is Battlefield, right? Battlefield is supposedly going to be like to help the save them and to get them into this the shooter category with a live service. And I think people are starting to expect that to be something that's incremental for them, not only for this year, but for next year and the year after, etc., etc. So, it all kind of hinges on this performance. And so, what

they're bidding the stock up in anticipation of this, and if it faults in any way, the stock's going right back down, right? So, it's like this is like the g the the game that people are playing.
So, this is all this is all basically battlefield expectations is what's driving the stock price,
right? And they do have a pipeline of products in theory. I mean, they canceled a few things, but they have some things that are coming as well, but I I think it's basically anticipation of Battlefield and the fact, you know, the Battlefield like the the reveal stuff that we talked about last week did pretty well. You know, I think people are kind of excited. They have a good window right now with Call of Duty kind of flailing. So, yeah, that's it.
I thought it was actually I I didn't watch the trailer before, you know, before we recorded. I know it wasn't a gameplay trailer, but they did a really nice job on like this game is about destructible environments. If you're going to have a USP come through in a non-gameplay trailer, I thought they did a pretty good job of that. Lay on C air. I was like, "Oh, I kind of actually Battlefield has never been bad trailers.

I will say that they have mastered I mean, go back and watch the trailers. Some of the best trailer counts. Battlefield 1's trailer. Oh, even 2042.
I concur with this. I mean, if there's one thing that Laura Mielli knows how to do is have a marketing team that makes great [ __ ]
And so, I was not surprised to see that it, you know, I hope that the game play measures up to it. And then, so, Phil, I just wanted to say on management, um, and so I've been doing a little bit of deep dive into sports and the subcategories of sports. The management aspect of sports, especially with football, is one of the smallest categories. It's not necessarily like a global play pattern. Germans love it, but it it tends to not be like a mass market opportunity in a little bit more niche. And
I mean, look at fantasy sports. Fantasy sports does multi-billions. I think it depends on what you're including the TAM number.
The management of how you're describing it. I'm going to build my stadium and my team and those things versus like real life, you know, minuteto minute. I'm

following a team that are real life players. So, management means two different things in that world. like fantasy sports is one thing you're right versus management with which is another thing which which is what I've been checking into now the the thing that I think is interesting crass if both games are being managed out of China this kind of goes against the well we should have the franchise teams manage the mobile skew versus a centralized mobile team. So now it's like okay now it's option three or option C which is we're going to start sending things to China to manage. So, that seems interesting. I didn't I didn't realize that.
No, I mean, I've said this a million times. Like, the fact that they're trying to have the teams manage the mobile SKUs internally makes no sense. It never made sense. They should have.
Absolutely.
But I I think this is an extension of the idea of having standalone mobile teams managing the mobile games, right? If you have a team in China that's doing all the work, [ __ ] Vancouver, right?

Like, keep making FIFA. You guys are great, but don't mess with the mobile game, right? Period. Do you know where this game is being made? The one that it's China is dying. Empire is China. Is it really? Yes.
FC. By the way, all use of FIFA in this conversation should be related to FC EA FC mobile.
Is FIFA online China as well? The freetoplay PC skew.
Yeah. Historically.
Yeah.
Was it China or was it
Yes.
For years? Like even back when I was there. Anyway, all right. What else we got? So, the the other big news this week that got a lot of press for some reason is Sony is suing Tencent over the shameless Horizon knockoff called
Light of Motor Light of Motor. The similarities are pretty egregious. I have to admit like on on the surface, right? So basically Sony's allegations is that Tencent like kind of like I

think was in the bidding for Horizon mobile spin-off in 2024 but ultimately [ __ ] I want to say NEI got the deal but I can't remember but someone else got it right but they've come out with this like similar concept called Light of Marim. They said they're specifically copying the protagonist design robotic animal creatures tribal sci-fi aesthetic logo font and marketing. Right? Which all of I think is actually kind of true, right? I mean, by just by just by looking at it, right? You could see that, right? And that's kind of confu creating confusion with the customers. Um, and they claim willful infringement, etc., etc., etc. All right. So, my take on this is it's really, really, really hard to protect game mechanics and ideas and theme even. Like, that's almost impossible to do that, right? And unless you can prove that they actually explicitly copied the design or the code etc like I think it's going to be really

really really h hard and that clearly did not happen it seems anyway in this space in this thing also tent really can argue that they have added systems and a survival element to make it distinct from a gameplay perspective which I think is also true and then the other thing is that international enforcement is almost impossible on this so even if they were successful they may be able to block it in Japan and maybe the US. I I mean, I guess they're doing a lawsuit in the US, but that does not necessarily they would block it in the China release at all. Right. So, anyway, it feels to me like what's going to happen is they're just going to make them make modifications of some case, make it similar, but not that similar. But it's much to do about nothing in my opinion. Anyway, this is kind of similar to the PUBG versus Netis, but not really. But if you remember Netty's uh mobile games, Rules of Survival and Knives Out basically copied PUBG's marketing materials or content in the game, right? They created similar maps and similar

items like frying pans as weapons, etc. And all the marketing that they did kind of piggybacked on the success of what PUBG did and they got sued. And what happened is they basically settled it with some alterations. And this could be an outcome for this. This is a little bit different because it was more like a marketing like live ops type thing. It's not a full game type thing. But ultimately, I don't think there there's much of a case here, right? I don't think you can really argue that they're really copying much. It's going to be hard to enforce the ability for them to copy theme and and art style even. So, I don't know. Not in this business, but that's my take.
I'm going to judge Judy this with you. I kind of agree with you. So, we're actually looking, if you're watching us, um a screenshot of the key art of Horizon and and this new game, and it's like, "Holy [ __ ] does this look the same way?" So, we we also touched on this last week when we talked about Monopoly Go and the new coin master board inspiration, right? So, there's

inspiration and then there's like copying. And this is a bad look when almost everything is identical, especially in the key art. when you read some of these articles too, like the list of what is the same is is pretty egregious. And a lot of the um Sony has submitted like I don't know five or six of the websites out there that are like uh this is almost the same thing and there's consumer confusion. So here's kind of you know what they're looking at on the copyright standpoint. Can Sony show uh substantial similarity between the protectable elements? So this is like uh the screenshots. So copyright was more um protectable elements. Trademark is using things like fonts, logos, titles to suggest affiliation. And so that for me when you look at this key art like that is total consumer confusion there. And so I think you're right Crest that there's probably going to be in the US where you know enforcable there's going to be some alterations done to some of the you know marketing materials but you know in

terms of inside the game all of those changes sadly because of international there is not really international law you know Tencent can get away with what was particularly shitty I thought is that Tencent went to Sony twice to license Horizon for this game and Sony kept saying no. That's where I think it's like, oh man, like that's just really shitty. You're trying.
No, that's definitely shitty. I I'm not like arguing it's not shitty. I just
Oh, I agree with you. Right. But in terms of enforcable, you're right that I think in the US they'll say you got to make a few changes, but that's going to be likely it if I had to put my judge duty crystal ball
together.
I am just like baffled at each of your takes. I really don't understand. Have you guys been living under a rock? Have you guys like been in mobile? Why is this like a Pikachu gasp moment? This happens every single day in mobile mobile and we have like don't give two shits which is sort of the point. Like you were talking about even mechanics

being hard to copyright, Eric. We don't want them to be copyrighted. No,
like we go back to like sh Yeah, I I know, right? We don't want like we don't want a lot of these cases. Now, I think you can you can draw a line between mechanics, patents, and copyright for IP. I do think you can draw that line, but I still think even on the IP side, I mean on mobile, there's basically no protection and the market seems to be working fine. If they had a smoking gun where they had a person from Sony making who made this game, brought over key art and then leverage that for inspiration or a code would even be worse, right? That that's a case that
that's Yeah, that that that I mean that's stealing. That's
that means a different thing. But like you theme and art style and characters and
that's silliness gameplay and
all elements of this from an IP protection. And by the way, as the IP holder, you have to enforce it. So uh like a long time ago when I was at Hasbro and I was on Transformers, we had

a fan who their website was using all of our content and their name of their website like used the word Transformers in it. And I had to go to this poor guy who was like our biggest supporter and I'm like I have to ask you to change the name of your website because you're using our transformer trademark and so we worked with him to come up with like a new name for him. But you have to enforce it as the IP holder because if you don't then they can take it away from you. I mean that's again my little not law school knowledge of all that but that's what I had to do. Oh my god that was like the worst call I had to make. Actually, that's not the worst call, but it was a All right, so the last thing I want to cover just really quickly is we have a friend of the pod who is part of the Ruckus team, and they have a new Steam page up for a game called The Holdouts. And so, if you are a fan of like Borderlands or Gearbox folks, uh the Ruckus team is, I think, ex Borderlands 3, and they are a AAA

startup now. And what's cool about them is they want to stay small. They raised originally like 5.5 seed and then 19 million series A. So not the crazy crazy numbers that we normally hear. Uh but what caught my eye when I saw that they finally put their Steam page up was that clearly they could benefit from a marketing person helping them out. And I wish Adam was also here to help me reinforce that when you put anything up, anything public, this needs to be part of a very thoughtful go to market process because you cannot unring the bell when you start to put things up. So when you do a Steam store, I don't know how you can go out without a trailer with five screenshots that all look the same with copy that sounds like it's from Gen X. They use the word rad in the copy to describe the game. And while you know, Chris, you and I might think that's rad, um, no Gen Z or Gen Alpha has ever in their life use the word rad,

unless it's to make fun of their Gen X parent. My little plea also because I went on X and I saw that they had this snippet of gameplay that actually looked really cool. The art style came out. The whole idea of the game is that you can merge weapons together. Like I think they take a a traffic cone, a trash can, and turn it into some like bizarre funny kind of weapon. I'm like, "Oh, why didn't you use that inside of the Steam page tour?" So, I'm like, "Please, if you're a startup, please consult with a marketing expert on your go to marketing strategy. I know your boys are going to [ __ ] all over this, but it does matter to have somebody that knows how to do these types of things help you do it right because you cannot claw back from bad press and bad assets to get through." So, There you go. That's my my my plea to them.
I am in the beta on this one. So, I'll be playing and checking it out. My son as well.
So, yeah. So, I guess this is a plea since we we like these guys and we are cheering them on. They have a play test that is go up. Go play it. The trailer this little it's not really a trailer.

It was just like a a snippet on social media looked really kind of fun and interesting and different, right? Like if you remember, I don't know, some of these like Splatoon or some of these other more, you know, humorbased moments. I like that they're doing something different. I guess in the world of shooters, Phil, you're always talking about like how can we do something different?
Is this like Splatoon? Splatoon meta.
I know. It felt very Splatoon, but like from a AAA developer, I guess, is what it felt like. Anyway, all right. And that's it. We will see you all next week. Later, skater.
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