TWIG #365 Golden Twig Awards: The Best, Worst, and Weirdest Moves in Games This Year

I think I should have made a prediction that Xbox gets spun out this year, but I still think they have a few more years of calamity ahead. So, I'm not going to make that prediction. [laughter] Let's throw it out there. My prediction is that Phil Spencer gets fired this year.
Wow.
And heaven helped them cuz he's like the only gamer left. [music]
Hello everyone and welcome to this weekend games 365. Today is the golden twig winners from 2025 that we're announcing in [music] 2026. I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing publishing role on the podcast. Today there's only three of us.
Eric, strategy and investing, Philip Black, monetization are
okay. So, all of the votes are in for the Golden Twig Awards. The winners are coming [music] today. So, thanks to all the listeners who went into the newsletter and voted. It only took a couple minutes. We have nine categories that we're going to go through today. And we're also going to do maybe a little bit of the feedback that we got.

It's always fun to pull out some of the quotes and read them here and give you our live reaction to the feedback that we will or likely won't address in 2026. We'll we'll see. So, I thought I just wanted to add one banter point in here because I've been watching Fallout season 2 TV. Guys, have you been watching?
I have. I am up to date.
It's good, isn't it?
So far so good. Like, okay, Stranger Things was such a huge disappointment. My my my kids lost their goddamn minds about how bad that was, right? I don't want any spoilers, but like it was just so bad. And Last of Us, the last episode, last season was really bad. So, like these sequels to these really popular series are seemingly very disappointing to most, to some anyway.
But this one seems to be much better. I think that they're doing a good job.
Bill, you watching? No.
Uh, nope. As soon as the game sales go up, it will be relevant again and I will I will watch. Good news though, they are starting season 3 filming in the next two months, which is like finally

solving these gap periods between streaming shows, which has just killed momentum. Like the fact that they got this thing out pretty quickly, I think is the saving grace.
Agree. Agree. I think there's another show called The Pit on HBO that did that recognized the same problem. It just it's airing this week. I think
if you want to make a mobile game based on that, I want to make Operation Meets The Pit. It is totally viable. I've been dying to do an Overcooked Pit game. Call me if you're trying to make this. I will write a check for it. It is destined to happen.
I like this idea, Phil. This is a good one.
I've been low-key pitching this.
Yeah, the plate spinning games and you get Noah Wy showing up as the face of the UA ads. Oh,
people are coming in with new patients. It's like Overcooked. You got a nurse trying to like heal like a gunshot wound. Other people are trying to get the homeless guy who's pissing on them to chill out and take his meds. Uh there there's something here
from the show actually. Good good one there. All right, I like this. All right, I'm going to do a very very quick

shill because PGC London is coming up next week, I think. Is so two quick events. January 18th, there's an executive supper club dinner. The sponsors for that are Appcharge, Heroic Labs, and Vibes. And then January 20th, PGC after dark. Really fun rooftop party. So that's AppCharge, Dualingo, and Sensor Tower. I love that Dualingo is a sponsor for [laughter] our events at the at PGC. All right, so corrections. It's not really a correction, but it's a little bit of a clarification. Some of the feedback that we get sometimes that from people that are newer to the show is, can you guys define mice nuts? Like what does this actually mean? Since we actually have a category that's called mice nuts, crests, could you explain mice nuts to the audience? Mice nuts means small, right? So, it's mice balls, which are very, very tiny, and that means they're small. I think Mishka made a mistake and thought it was like some kind of actual nut or

something like that. He was okay.
Nuts that mice eat is what he originally.
Oh, right. Right. Right. Like lost in translation, you know, he's European, you know, old Europe, whatever. So, originally, what I said was that it was under a hundred million dollars. That was mice nuts. And the reason I said that is because anything under $100 million is almost immaterial to a publicly traded company. So like these big companies like EA and Activision, whatever. But even now like Scopely, Plays, King, Supercell, like all these things like $100 million is meaningless, right? But I could come down around $50 million for the smaller sides or midsize companies as being mice nuts. But for the most part, if it's rel related to the bigger like you know the gen the publishers that are out there kind of generating most of the revenue in the business I would say 100 million is still that threshold of mice nuts.
Got it. Okay. Well, thank you for that. Phil, any thoughts on mice nuts? We actually, as a funny joke, we had jackets made and I think I put mice nuts

on like one of the sleeves.
Yeah, I still have it.
Yeah. Yeah,
I'm sporting it.
People are like, "What does that mean?" and I just chuckle and I'm like, "Okay, listen to the podcast."
By the way, I did not coin this term. This was like like I'm sure it was even before then. It was in the '9s during investment banking days. It's like a way of describing something that was very small and immaterial, not relevant. So,
yeah, there was this guy I worked with at EA, Jason Willig, who was our finance guy, and this is like ' 07, and he would use it all the time. And I I had to do the like, what do you mean by this back then? So, when you said it, I was like, "Oh, this must have been going around EA back in the day. Yeah.
All right, let's get into I wish we had some sort of musical flare going on. Maybe Dom will add that for me. The Golden Twig Awards 2025 winners. Here we go. [gasps and laughter] Oh, that's Phil. First chair. First chair, Phil. Well done. All right. The talk of the year. This is the news stories [music] that broke the internet. Basically, what I'm going to do here is I'll read out each

question. I'll read out some of the nominees and then, you know, read out the winner. This one had a bunch of nominees. So, here are some of the nominees. EA gets embraced by the Saudis in the largest gaming deal ever. Ubisoft, nepotism to Tencent. Guess who added that one? Must have been Mr. Crest. Roblox, Nintendo Switch, GTA delays, Epic versus Apple, Craftton versus Subnotica, and then AI stories. So, the winner, and this is was pretty cut and dry, 43% said EA. I think really that was the story. I'll also give out who added each of the stories. I will say that Adam went first in our list. And so, Adam is a winner as a lot of these because he took the obvious one. So, plus he's brilliant. But, so Adam was that one. The runner up was what Mishka put in. And we gave him a b a bunch of for this. All the AI stories. Do you remember Chris? We were like, "What are you doing? and he put that in and

that that was the runner up at 27%.
Yeah. I mean, I totally get the EA thing. I mean, this is like a huge deal in the space and everyone in their mother who has absolutely no idea what they're talking about had an opinion on LinkedIn, right? So, like, you know, all these people just got it all wrong. But, you know, the AI stuff, I get it. I think probably the AI stories is more because AI was such a big news story over the year. I don't think it was really related to gaming at all, right? because AI and gaming seems very nent besides you know you know ad tech right so I don't know why AI stories and gaming were relevant but certainly AI just generally
Phil any thoughts on EA take running away with this one
I mean so one thing I will say so listeners know is that we try not to all nominate the same thing so there's a little bit of variety so just just to hang that out there uh we don't always necessarily fullheartedly believe in the the nominations we put forward but yeah this totally makes sense this is one of the biggest gaming deals of all time, if not the biggest gaming deal. I forget, Eric, if it exceeded the Activision

Microsoft purchase, but yeah. I mean, talk of the year, biggest gaming deal of all time. How do you how do you not nominate that? How do you not vote for that?
No, Activision was a little bit bigger, I think. Right.
Yeah. I think what made this bigger was the LBO nature, which didn't we actually determine it wasn't an LBO?
Yeah, it basically wasn't an LBO when the the PE firm has like less than like I think it was like 5% of the deal. So, it's not an LBO
leverage buyout, just in case people don't know what that is. All right, question number two. Oops, we did it again. These are our most embarrassing predictions that we as hosts made. So, let me read off a few of them. And by the way, we basically tied on a bunch of them. So, Phil's was Enzoy is the new Sims. Mishka said Apple is releasing new game app to kill web shops. Crest conveniently didn't enter anything, so he wouldn't win this one. I think you've won in the past. Adam said Black Ops 7 will beat Battlefield 6. And then I

said, I'm not sure that families are going to buy the Switch, too. So, the winner here, it's close on the first two. Actually, it's Let's see if I had to just pick 29% to Philip Black. Enzoy is the new Sims. Phil just wanted an award is basically what happened here.
Enzoy needed an award. [laughter] Fair point. Fair point. But close behind was 26%. Mishka, Apple is releasing the new game app to kill web shops.
Split vote. Love it. Love it. Also, I will say we did not write these questions. Mishka wrote these questions. I don't know if Enzo is the new Sims is the exact phrasing I would use. But look at I'm just happy for Enzo and I'm happy for me who will hopefully get a trip. Does I don't know. Does the award go to Does the award go to Craftton or does it go to me? [laughter] But I would I would love to go out to South Korea and present it to them. Although I don't know if they take it well. Still a believer, you know. No, I'm I'm holding out hope, man. [laughter]
Didn't you move on to Animo is your your Inzoy of 2026.
I Well, I wouldn't say that's an

embarrassing prediction yet. That one's coming true. And that's going to be on What was the other question? Like the biggest talk of the year. It's going to be an Nemo. Mark my words.
Okay. All right. We'll time stamp this. All right. So, number three, most damage taken in a year. So, here are some of the nominees. Xbox falling out of the console race. Ubisoft and all Ubisoft sings Lilith. Warner Brothers games getting valued zero by Netflix CEO and Amazon Game Studio. A decade of expensive failures culminating in into many closures. So 41% the winner for this is Xbox falling out of the console race with studio closures and in the failing subscription model. This was Adam's nomination. Number two, 30% was my vote, which was Ubisoft nepotism. I think Crest probably agrees with that, too. Loss of the Crown Jewels to 10-centent, 40,000, headcount reduction in Star Wars Outlaws underperformed, although I think I got the year wrong on that. So, Crest, thoughts?

I mean, I think this makes the most sense like, and I don't think this story is over at all. So, Xbox is just a mess. You know, the enthusiast press has been carrying water for them for years, and now they're full force against them now, which when you lose the enthusiast press, dude, it's you've really lost. Hardware is failing, software is underperforming, Call of Duty, subscription revenue is likely going to fall dramatically next year. I think I should have made a prediction that Xbox gets spun out this year, but I still think they have a few more years of calamity ahead, so I'm not going to make that [laughter] prediction. So, but I I bet in 2027 we see something really dramatic happen with Xbox.
Phil Spencer gets fired this year, right? I mean, there's there's no way he
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Actually, that should have been our predictions.
Get a little bit You're right. We should have been a little bit more aggressive,
spicy in the predictions. Let's throw it out there. My prediction is that Phil Spencer gets fired this year.
Wow.

And heaven helped them because he's like the only gamer left, right? like he's the only guy with actual experience in the gaming industry, right? So,
I mean, they've really been positioning Sarah Bond. I think they elevated her to president and the writing has been on the wall. Wasn't there a news article that he was supposedly going to retire and then they they came out and said that wasn't like actually true, but it feels like they are laying the groundwork so that when it happens, it's more retirement focused than [clears throat]
Yeah. I mean, where there's smoke, there's fire. If I were him, God, I wouldn't put up with this dude. How long do you How long can you suffer through this nonsense with Microsoft? I will say Booty is has a lot of experience in gaming.
That's true. Yeah.
Sarah Bond should not be managing this stuff at all.
Well, I don't know. I I I think there's an element of being an operator. Like sometimes you need an adult in a room to be the operator. And as long as you've got really good game oriented folks underneath, I don't know. I think you can do it both ways.
All right. So, Dres is like
disagree 1,000%. Jen knows I I Zack

Aelnik not a gamer doesn't give a about games. I just think I would love to see gamers win at gaming executive positions but I just don't think it's a prereck. I think the data bears that out. He just he doesn't give two shits and he's been one of the most successful gaming CEOs. Yeah.
And Bobby Got Yes. That's true. Bobby
Andrew Wilson's playing FIFA on the weekends. Well, maybe he's playing
No, Andrew Wilson actually is a
he's a gamer, isn't he?
Yeah, he is. He came up through FIFA
and so is Frank Jabau and even No,
how about this? Someone with experience in the gaming industry should be head of a gaming company. How about that? Like then let's let's just leave it that. Okay.
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investors. Now, if you are building, launching, or buying, don't do it alone. Do it with us. Connect by emailing to consulting deconstructorof.com. All right, so let's go to most disappointing game of the year. Okay, there were a bunch of nominees here. Um, here's what they were. Minds Eye from Build a Rocket Boy, Enzoy, Rainbow Six, Siege X, uh, Splitgate to Borderlands, Call of Duty Black Ops 7, and Mo. So the winner, which was pretty clear winner, 38% to mind's eye. This is Adam's entry. And so this was after seven years of development, a game so bad it destroyed the company. Wow. Number two at 20% was mine, Call of Duty Black Ops 7. Number three was Moco from Mishka. So Phil, you don't agree with this one? I I I mean,

we talked about this during the nomination, but like disappointing means there needs to be some sort of expectations to start with for you to be disappointed. And Minds Eye was never an anticipated game to begin with. It was always a train wreck. Everything from Build a Rocket Boy has always been a train wreck that was coming. So, no expectations. The real winner here to me is Call of Duty. Call of Duty or at least I would say Moco. Those are the two, I'd say, legitimate candidates. I like that take that in order for something to be disappointing, you have to have an expectation of it being good in the first place. I had no idea what Finesai was to be. I was like, wait, my I had to look it up when Adam put it in there cuz my thought I agree 100%. I was super disappointed in how Black Ops 7 came out. I I do agree with Phil in a way, but it was under the radar for whatever reason, but the sheer scope of this failure in terms of like the amount of money that was spent by Galaxy and all these other funds was pretty epic failure generally speaking. And then also the only reason that Call of Duty kind of bugs me is because Call of Duty was always expected to be a down year

this year, right? Because last year was the year before was the hero skew. This was like an iteration of Black Ops which was you know a sign of Microsoft's mismanagement of Activision right in the sense that they are just iterating on something one year after the hero skew and then next year we have the new Modern Warfare skew which actually should grow the franchise right we should see it growth this year I mean obviously it's not the best franchise in series but it should grow it I guess maybe investors expected this to be a down year for Call of Duty but it probably not as extreme as actually happened. I
I mean, Eric, hasn't it been the bestselling game in the United States every single year that it's come out? Or at least, you know, I don't I don't know the exact number in front of me, but I mean, it didn't just disappoint. I mean, it lost its title to Battlefield.
It's still the second bestselling game of the year, right?
It is. It do. Do we know that at the end of the year? Was it was it Battlefield? I don't even I haven't seen the charts yet.
I don't know. I haven't I haven't seen your end, but I do know it had the worst

like review scores of any Call of Duty game ever,
even from a just a reception standpoint.
Here's what I'll say. Call of Duty will be back and Battlefield's starting to really deteriorate fast. And so Call of Duty when it comes out this holiday will be back. I'm not too worried about that franchise despite how bad Microsoft's going to mismanage it. So
yeah, even with GTA 6 coming
Oh, that's a good point. September.
No, it's going to be October, November. Yeah, you're right. They fit right and chop each other. I I got to rethink this one.
Yeah, this is a tough one. I mean [laughter] I mean I do agree that Modern Warfare is their, you know, better, I guess, subbrand, so to speak. That's the one that I always loved. But are they just they're going to resurface that for the third or the fourth time? I mean, I don't know. They keep coming back.
I mean, to be clear, Black Ops is the hero skew. They just iterated one after the other this time. Yeah, they said they're going to stop that. They're going to stop the two in a row in a sub theme in a subbrand.

Number five, Mice Nuts, the best financially meaningless game. So, I think when we did this, we assumed under 50 million. We were writing notes to each other during this to's point earlier. So, Adam threw out a bunch in the beginning. So, it was like Night Rain, Dispatch, Notables.
What a cheater.
Loop Prince. I know [laughter] he like five and Firebomb. Like, come on, man. [laughter] Chaos Zero, Clover Pit, uh, New Playground, Game of Thrones, Kings Road, there might even been some others. So, what one was Adam's Dispatch because he threw out five. Number two is Blueprints. I actually I did a little segment on Blueprints when it came out earlier in the year because it was one of the highest Metacritic scores of all time at launch in that point. So, anyway, Crest, 12% of people agreed with you about Game of Thrones King's Road. What's really sad about that is the only reason it got voted about is because I keeping talking about it. You know what I mean? Like no one's even heard of this game, you know? It's like I know.
And what's really sad is if you look at

some of the strategies that we've seen out there about crossplatform, this game was crossplatform PC and mobile, free to play, absolutely massive license, insane production value, right? And it was a complete disaster, right? And so like this was like the promise of crossplatform and it bombed, right? Now, I'm still 400 plus hours into this game, right? But honestly, it is I am starting to fade and the game is definitely fading. Like, I think it doesn't have much longer left, I don't think. I think it's one big update away from just failing. So, anyway, sad, sad, sad.
What's the developer for this one again? Is this a Chinese developer?
Net Marble.
Net Marvel. Sorry. Yes. I couldn't remember off the top of my head, but I don't know who actually made the game, but it probably was a Net Marvel studio. I would imagine
they had the King Arthur game. I'm sure they just reskinned it.
Yeah. No, that's true.
All right. Well, there you go. Most questionable move of the year. And so, the nominees for this are Supercell Moco and Boat Game Launch Strategies, Ubisoft

Spin Out of Vantage Studios, Dreams Royal Kingdom half a billion dollar launch, Apple's dedicated games app, Netflix games 2.0, the big screen pivot. So, basically, this one feels like a fiveway tie. If we're looking at the chart, it just looks like a pin wheel. So, if we had to pick a winner with what was it? 21% Dreams Royal Kingdom launch. And Phil put that one forward.
I think I think you clap for this.
I mean, I I don't even know. I don't I don't think this is like a stat sig difference in in the rankings, but I gave you that one. The next two are seem to be Oh, they are tied. 20.5% Ubisoft spin out of Vantage Studio which was Crest and then Supercell's Moco Boat game launch strategy from Adam. The last two also tied and those were mine and Mishkos with Netflix and Apples. So Phil, congrats, I guess on, you know, I guess you get to go to Turkey and hand this award to Dream.

It's just that the award is just a big question mark. I'm just really intrigued that there was so much diversity of opinion for the most questionable move. There wasn't consensus here, which I thought was was really interesting. Yeah. Do you think it's because of the different perspectives of people we have listening? Like some people love to on marketing like you guys. Some people agree with Chris on Ubisoft. I don't know. Chris, what do you think?
I don't know. Maybe this is just kind of the sign of the times. You know, when the market's kind of in transition, you know, like people that are out of position are making really stupid decisions on what they're doing. You know, if you think about it, like all these companies are really out of position right now. Ubisoft, Supercell, well actually Dream is not so much. Apple and Netflix. So, I think the dream thing is like a big one, right? Like these guys were on the top of the world and then they did some stupid move, but now their game's doing fine, you know? Like they're just doing traditional UA arbitrage, you know? But TV advertising and mobile gaming is just kind of dumb in my opinion and as I've said many times. So, I think I think that one makes sense. But yeah, I don't know.

It's interesting. I think if you remember on this whole topic, I agree that they spent too much on the celebrity portion of the campaign. I think when we added it up, it got to like between, I don't know, 40 and $50 million just in like celebrity fees. So, I think that was too much. I think that the idea of using collabs or celebrities in your creative is not a bad idea if you can ensure that the creative translates and converts in UA in addition to whatever you do in TV. TV is kind of like the last stop of your game when you go to like mass market media. And basically um if you remember when I talked to Ben Webb at Scopely and we did that MAU interview, he talked about how the big win for them was that the creative coming out of any of the TV campaigns absolutely converts the best in performance marketing UA on mobile. And so that's the secret behind these that if you can make that work. But I agree, Chris, I agree. It's like putting

a Royal Kingdom ad on the NBA finals with LeBron isn't necessarily what's going to convert people into your Royal Kingdom match game.
I stand by match three at equilibrium. None of these games from plays are making it out the door either. Family scapes, Aqua Match, this market is stuffed. CPIs are too high. Clear clear the decks. Move on to merge. I think Bishka made the prediction that a Chinese company was going to get a winner in puzzle.
Completely reasonable. I mean, I don't think Truck Star is it. I think Truckstar has done great. I don't I think it's probably reached equilibrium in terms of scaling, but I think the Chinese march into casual puzzle will be interesting to see whether or not they can get the I mean, they're already in merge, right? They're already in merge. They're aggressive. I think the challenge they have is that you can't just run. Let's let's hold off on this one. I think this is a deeper conversation, but I'm very curious to see how the Chinese will approach this.
Got it. All right. The next category, the most brilliant move of the year. So,

the opposite of the last one. Here are the nominees. AI and ad tech and ad creative as fundamental saving grace post IDFA. Tim Sweeney choosing the 100 million yearsl long legal fight and the Epic versus Google versus Apple on all of those uh lawsuits and settlements. Play Tikica acquiring Super Play, Saudis entry into gaming. And so Mishka combined a couple things in here. Scopi uh buying Niantic and then obviously just you know what Saudi doing with EA and Moonton and others. So the clear winner on this one was with 40% Tim Sweeney. So, this is the one I put forward. I didn't realize we had so many Tim Sweeney fans in the audience. Or maybe it's all of the mobile people who want lower rough share deals coming out of Apple and Google. Number two was the Saudi entry into gaming. And so, Phil, this kind of like like I said like looped yours in because yours was specifically scopably buying Niantic.
Again, we didn't write these. Mishka wrote these. [laughter]

This doesn't make any sense to me, right? This is not a win for the industry. This was a win for Epic. Period. End of sentence, you know. I mean, they basically did a back alley deal with Google for most favored nation, which they had an agreement to do this from the very beginning, like five, I don't know, whenever this thing started, you know. So,
2020. Yeah.
Yeah. This goes against all of Tim's principles. You know, the reason he started this whole thing to begin with is to improve the ecosystem for everybody, not just for Epic. You know, the judge herself basically said these exact words. It's not just me. You know, it's like they basically said they're like two mortal enemies who pounded out each other relentlessly in the courtroom for years are now suddenly BFFs. She's like, it's just crazy. And so, you know, and when Tim first started this stuff, he said, "We are fighting for freedom of people who brought smartphones and install apps from sources of their choosing, for the freedom for creators and apps to distribute them as they choose, and the freedom of both groups to do business

directly." Right? like that was his stated goal. Now they're just benefiting to do business directly with Epic, right? Everyone else can go be off, right? Basically, so it's like,
yeah,
I don't think people really are understanding exactly what this agreement says.
Well, if I remember correctly, that got rejected by the judge who with the calling them BFFs that are now so we are unresolved at this point in time and I think the judge is actually looking at what the outcomes are still going to be. So that one got rejected to your point and yes I think we were all shocked when we're like wait so if you have a cosmetic inapp purchase it's less royalty rate like how on earth is that for everybody and fighting for the freedom of creators that didn't seem to make sense.
Yeah it really doesn't.
But I think you know him spending over $und00 million on the fight was what maybe what people were were thinking about. Okay, so the limping donkey award and so the definition of this

I had to ask the guys I'm like what do you mean? So this is like a unicorn company like only on paper and I think it the bed kind of. Is that what what does it mean to you guys?
Company was worth a lot of money now it's not worth a lot of money.
All right, there you go. I talk it a little bit more as like the bed. All right, so this is basically a tie for the number like first here are the nominees. Dream Haven is not the Blizzard 2.0 that it was valued at. TheoryCraft not the Riot 2.0 it was ver valued at Believer also not the Riot 2.0 it's valued at Ubisoft less than the sum of its IPs. Bungie Marathon Fiasco, Destiny Collapse, Sony's Impairment Laws, Gaming VCs, I think Cres, you put this, you just like summarized and said, "Let's do all gaming VCs." And then Forte again, I think, which was that might have been the winner last year, raised 900 million for web 3 gaming and nowhere to be found. So the the tie for the winner seems to be TheoryCraft ekking it out a little bit with 28%. and

then Crest Gaming VCs coming in at 27%. Uh, both of these were your picks.
You might as well just add them all up together and just put Light Speed, Griffin, A16Z, Galaxy as the big VCs that are just absolutely failing miserably. And, you know, their their stated strategy of, you know, Blizzard/Riot 2.0 was stupid to begin with. What do you think's going to happen? You know, so
do we if we were to rewind back in time to and this was all over COVID, right? When all of these guys got these investments, do you think you back then would have said that was a smart move or a dumb move to invest into those teams?
I was saying it back then. I was saying I'm I've been saying it all along. This is not a venture capital investment space. Mobile is an investment space for VCs because it scales over time, right? gaming is like a one hit type thing and then they start all over again. It's

just not a VC model. It never was like that. I've been saying this forever. Yeah. Right. No.
And I don't want to disparrage like the small VCs that are help funding you know small startups like at least the initial round to get them going and to get like some kind of like you know early stage stuff going. That makes sense to me. It's just at these big levels it's like you're becoming a publisher right and the publishers should make these investments not venture capitalists.
Yeah. The thing is it's it's the tourists, right, that don't know anything about games that are coming in here and making these big investments. That's the thing that drives me insane, you know, like people that have never even been in the industry. Just like the hot chick at the bar, you know, you know, in 2021. It was just really stupid. The whole idea was stupid.
Yeah.
Well, I just think we should first of all just issue a correction that La La Land was not the winner. In fact, it was actually Moonlight and Forte is actually the winner here. Jen, we misread the colors.
Oh, is that true?
Yeah. [laughter] TheoryCraft actually has the lowest vote share. It's just that the red shares look very similar to one another.

Oh, did I mess that up?
Yep.
Oh, so Gaming VC's Forte won again basically.
Correct.
Gaming VCs got number two, but Forte is number one. You're right. Ship.
Yeah. If you add up all the that the VCs did, they'd won by a by a landslide, right? So like believer, theory craft and gaming VCs, those three added up to more than Forte.
What I see in all these results, Eric and Jen, is a lot of expressive voting. A lot of anger that people are trying to unleash when they vote, [laughter] a lot of anger at web3, anger at Ubisoft, anger at all these different people. Even though there might be a better informed voting choice,
I don't know. But see, the thing is that Ubisoft is so off the radar from everyone. I don't know if everyone's angry besides me, right? like no one cares about this French company that's failing, right?
I don't think that's the case at all. I think what really bothers people is the nepotism that you've pointed out. I think you've been good at continually pointing out how broken that is. I think the criminal activity I almost call it a

criminal activity siphoning siphoning the IPS to a new company, your most valuable assets. I just remain astonished how this is legal under EU law. And I think it's just like all these franchises that should be having value are just being mismanaged left and right. And these are like franchises I think people love. Not to mention it feels like they become a factory for the same open world game over and over again. It's an easy punching bag, right? And they're
It really is easy. So we're doing a deep dive with Pixels and Profits with Joseph Kim and Matt. Matt and Brian. So I'm doing that tomorrow. So that should be interesting.
Oh yeah. Also for Ubisoft, we've been glossing over all of the workplace hostile work environment. Remember the there was like the lawsuit this year.
No, none of which has been fixed. None of which has been fixed.
No. And Serge was a dirty birdie that one, man. So he once he got fired, that's when everything fell fell off a cliff. Anyway, I'll talk more about it later.
Oh, on somebody else's podcast. Got it. Okay.
On someone else's podcast.
This is great. This is great. Thank you

so much. Okay, so sorry about that. Yeah, so the pink and the red look the same. So Forte actually won again. Like I think that was a repeat from last year. Okay, so the next one is Crushed It. Here are the nominees. Grow a garden. This is Phil's topping 21.3 million CCU Century Games, Battlefield 6, Clash Royale, and Supercell's new president, Sarah Jessica Bach. I guess this is me. I think that was Mishka's. I think I had my all of Chinese gaming, but I think it got put in here as Micro Fund, which is Gossip Park Harbor. So, almost another tie. Ekking it out for the win is Century Games, which is Adams Battlefield 6. So, Crest, you and I kind of tag team on this one a little bit. Uh, I think I gave kudos to the marketing side of Battlefield 6. You obviously on the business side, so that was pretty close. 33% to Sentry Games, 31% to Battlefield 6. Adam, you know, cleaning house with all of this. I guess

next year I'm gonna have to go first and maybe I'll get more. Phil, congrats. You got you yours got third.
I was happy for Grill Garden. I didn't expect it to get basically a fourth of the vote. I think there's just a lot of people that don't touch or interact with Roblox games and I would say you'll be hearing more from Roblox next year.
All right.
Yeah. Well, Grow Garden is like this one hit wonder, right? It's down dramatically as is Roblox stock, which we'll talk about in a minute.
Yeah. Yeah. But holy crap, dude. Yeah, this thing is like one and done, you know? That's Yeah.
Yeah.
Move all your bets to steal a brain rot. Still going strong. Crushed it.
Yeah. There's
And on Fortnite, too.
Fortnite. Really?
Yeah. On UFN, it's doing really well.
Oh, they ported it to Fortnite.
Mhm. I think you'll be hearing a lot more about that this year, too.
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every ad dollar work harder by revealing exactly where your players come from and how they interact with your app. Their platform transform mountains of complex data into clear, actionable intelligence that separates winning campaigns from budget- draining experiments. And I know that many of the top game companies leverage Appslier and are a key partner in their success. Appslier, where your app's potential meets performance. All right, so the next segment we want to do is a little bit of as part of the awards, we ask for your feedback and so we wanted to share some of the feedback with you guys and let you know what we're going to do about it or not. Phil, do you want to do this first one? Yeah, I think you know it's it's something that we talk about amongst the hosts quite a bit which is trying to balance all the different things we talk about on the podcast and I know a lot of people have noticed us moving away from more core game deconstructions and so

yeah that has definitely been heard and it's something we're trying to think about. Uh, I think you saw that also manifest in shooter monthly is trying to split this out and make sure that we can go into the deep dives and get really nerdy about mechanics and cover specific genres. And I would say keep your eyes and ears peeled. You might see more genre monthly or discipline monthly podcasts come out, but we're of course trying to think about how we do it on the main Twig podcast, too.
Yes. I think, you know, the feedback that I typically get about Twig itself is listeners love that it's a great news show and they love that they can hear our different perspectives and takes on what's going on in the news and what's the most important topics. So, from a deconstruction and product specific details, we're trying to figure out where that fits into the deconstructor fund universe. So, we will come back with some more updates on that soon. So, here was another piece of feedback. The podcast was described as enjoyable, getting even better with deeper analysis in a growing bench of contributors. The

team dynamics and chemistry were also highly praised. That is an AI summary of a bunch of feedback, but aw, thanks. You love us. You really love us. So, I took the positive one. Crest, I gave you this next one to read out. Go for it.
One respondent suggested limiting the guest count to a maximum of three or four to avoid the show feeling overcrowded and to rotate regulars. Another asked if Crest was getting too old and one request putting Philip Black in his place more often. I couldn't agree with the latter one more that I like one.
I am getting too old. That's for sure. Sometimes I'm I'm a little bit worried that I'm getting out of the core demographic of what's cool. But luckily I have kids for that. But us old folks are people too, you know. We need to we need to have our opinions out there. So
yes, we are sure. [laughter] or Phil, take this next one.
Cover more Roblox things was something that we also got feedback on. I agree.

I'm trying. [laughter] I'm trying. As the platform continues to grow in prominence, people continue to age up on the platform, we get that age verification data coming this year that I know is going to blow Eric Cresy's [laughter] mind on the over 13s. This is not going away. This is not going away. I think, you know, it's it's always tough on Twig. There's so many different different people that listen to the podcast in so many different industries that we try to make a you know a top us style what's going on, what's the biggest news stories and I think Roblox is going to continue to be in the news. So I think you're going to continue to hear about it from us. I
mean I think we cover Roblox a lot really.
I actually think we do too. Yeah I
I I think what I would like to do a little bit more on the podcast is talk about the individual games that are rising. I mean we talked about Stea Brain Raw, we talked about Grow Garden. I think continue to talk about things like Rivals is the shooter game that I think is absolutely magnificent on the platform. I actually want to talk about on shooter monthly, but some of the stuff that I think really breaks out on Roblox and I think again we'll see more of that this year. I think those are things we will continue to cover. The really big successes that also hit

mainstream.
Yeah, that's fair. I think we do it a bit more from a company, their overall numbers. Later on, I have an article about what they announced at CES. So, I think Phil, you know, because you do a little bit of work in the space on the game side, I typically rely on you for bringing that up. Cool. All right. So, this one was a little bit longer, but I thought it was really thoughtful. So, let me read this out. Quote, "As a historically frequent critic, let me say, let me say, I think you have really had a good last one to two years. I find the podcast to be getting even better with deep analysis, a growing bench of contributors, and a somewhat more serious take on the industry. Hats off to you. Constructive feedback. Try to be less cynical all the time. I'm looking at you, Mishka. Thought that would have been a crest, but it's like I'm looking at you, Mishka. As you know, building is very difficult. Deconstructing is much easier. Try to appreciate the builders more even in failure. the DOF audience

would grow and your content would improve with a bit less of a cynical vibe. You know, we talk about this all the time. It's easier to on things than to lift things up. So, Crest, what do you take away from this?
First of all, I I'm personally trying to get better at this in 2026. Now, I [laughter] it's going to be baby steps, just to be clear. But, um
save I'm saving a spot for you on the Animo train. Chugga chuga chuga chuga. Um, [laughter] but I honestly I think the industry itself has been going through like a serious transition over the last two years and I think we're kind of getting through that transition to some degree where we'll be into like more of a steady eddy type space but we've seen like crazy layoffs like shut down of failed studios these ridiculous strategies from companies that are kind of out of position like Netflix and Microsoft and Ubisoft. It's been pretty dramatic and negative just in general like covering this industry which has been really hard and hard to stay positive right that and so I think we

will see a little bit more stability and a little easier to cover the industry with less like kind of big negative headlines you know
I'd go back to one of your core thesises on the podcast which I don't think you you iterate enough what drives growth in this industry is new platforms new platforms are new opportunity they're new spaces to conquer and so what are the new platforms Why get excited about Roblox? Why I want UFN to grow? But I would say, do you see anything else besides those two? It's clearly not Steam Deck or Steambox, but no.
Do you see anything else besides those?
There in lies the big problem, right? There is no big platform introduction imminent.
What about Discord's IPO? You think there's anything I mean IPO isn't going to change the underlying mechanics, but you don't think this is a good UA source? I mean, they they don't have the inventory yet, clearly.
I they're pitching that hard, right? But I don't I don't know. I don't see it. Right. people that are on Discord are already captured, right? They're not capturing new people on Discord to buy games. You know what I mean? They're not expanding the audience. But what we really do need

is a new platform. And nothing is going to be as big as mobile, but like like VR to take off, like blockchain was obviously failed, but that could have taken off. you know, AI like some again new tech, new content from AI games that like expand the audience, expand a demo, expand different monetization mechanics, etc. I don't
What is left to expand though? That's what I don't get, Eric. Like, who isn't a gamer? Like games are on the New York Times, they're on Reddit. What What is left to
I guess maybe it's Yeah, it's content that actually converts, right? So mobile is only converting like 3% of the audience, right, on any given game. So we need content that converts a more a bigger percentage of that audience so that is compelling enough for people to spend significant amount of money to grow the basically the TAM of this industry. So that's what I'm thinking anyway. Well, there's conversion to purchase and then there's also conversion of attention which kind of leads into the Roblox story I wanted to cover because it's about advertising and

when you've got the younger audience that doesn't have share of wallet have a lot of money, you have to figure out how to convert their attention which I think is what Roblox and Chris like this is your whole thesis on why Roblox has a future is if they can finally figure out advertising maybe they can start to convert some of that attention into dollars. So, let me just do a little update on the story. So, CES is this week. If you don't know, it's the Consumer Electronic Show. Happens in Vegas every year in January. So, Roblox just announced several major updates to its advertising business. They have a new homepage feature uh and it's a new ad format. This immersive format places video content within a 3D viewing environment on the homepage, allowing users to preview experiences before jumping in. Just a segue for me as as I worked at Riot and we had our homepage on the ri on the on the launcher or if you look at what happens on the homepage of Netflix or Fortnite. This is the most exclusive and highest converting ad

content you can possibly have. Imagine, you know, back in the old day when people used to buy like the YouTube mast head, remember that? Like you get so many eyeballs on things. So them Roblox introducing this is a really big deal. So they are also expanding their programmatic partnership and so this is like automatic ads. Uh the platform announced a new partnership with Amazon DSP joining other partners like Pubmatic and Magnite to allow brands to buy ads programmatically at scale. This is a really big deal. Programmatic is what allows you to scale your ad business. So without programmatic, it's everything being more manual. It's never going to scale. And so this is good news for them. High engagement metrics. And so I think we know that the rewarded video has been in beta for a long time with a lot of different game companies that we know we're familiar with. So they say rewarded ads have achieved completion rates of over 90% and average

viewability of over 95%. So my take on all of this news is we're starting to see the expansion of the ad business. These are positive signs. I don't think we're there yet. This is the way that they're going to have to monetize Gen A because you're not always going to get money out of them. In the article, there was a great article on Gamespeed. There was a back and forth between uh someone kind of challenging Roblox saying, well, like it's really difficult to put ads into a 3D space versus like a flat space that you see on mobile and creators have not yet seen meaningful results from these ads. So Crest, I think perhaps some of the stock market agreed with this guy on that. What did you see as the reaction on the stock?
Well, the stock has gotten crushed. Like I I actually wasn't even following it because I was not even I was trying to get away from the stock market for a while. It is almost down 50% from its high from $150 down to 76. You know, that's like $50 billion in

market cap just gone in a few months. You know, that's insane. like that is really insane movement on any stock. But there are a few reasons. One, the main reason I think is that the new games are not comping grow a garden and brain rot, right? So they are seeing declines in growth and this next quarter is looking like it's going to be far weaker than last quarter. And so I think people are worried about what the guidance they're going to give for next year, both topline and bottom line, because they say they're increasing spending because of all the influx of new players and also the new age verification technology that they've been implementing may actually divulge the truth about their platform, which it's not aging up at all, right? So, I mean, they're a little bit worried about what this thing might actually do, but also they're worried about that it may restrict some users like children, which is the primary audience, from using a lot of the features in their games that may may reduce the amount of people that are actually playing their games. Frankly, the what I did here was that the New York Times interview with those basically really screwed them over,

right?
Really, the hard fork episode.
Yeah. I mean because it puts a little bit of fear in them that that he is so not media trained to be able to like handle these questions that there may be risk there and you know he really didn't do himself any favors of doing that interview with those Vipers at New York Times you know so you know corp's got to do better and I know they listen to this so you guys got to do better so [laughter] and then finally it's clear that like some big institution is getting out of this stock because I think people once you see people one big institution that owns the stock leave, then the hedge funds just pile on and just sell it all and start shorting. So there's like kind of a run on the stock to some degree. There's some mechanical thing which I am not an expert in, but there's some mechanical on a trading basis. And so frankly for me, like this seems way oversold. I think the story is still kind of there, right? They're they're improving the the fundamentals of the business and doing more advertising and I think like they're making progress there and they're going to be able to

monetize their network better. But again, this is not trading advice, right? But the moral of the story is the same thing I've been saying on this podcast forever. Do not trade individual stocks. Like you have no advantage of trading individual stocks. And these stocks in particular are hedge fund hotels that people are coming in and out of, right, and chasing returns. Buy the index like the VTI. Do not buy these stocks.
Yes. Efficient market hypothesis. Welcome to the crew, Eric. We are happy to have you.
That is exactly Eugene FMA, Nobel Prize winner. Yes. Just put your money in index or management free fidelity S&P 500 shares. Beautiful.
No, that's true. But the efficient hypothesis is actually a total because there is no efficiencies, right? Because these people know more information than anybody else, right?
Market ends up surfacing that very quickly. We get edited into le equilibrium.
No, the stock the individual stocks don't only the market. They were talking about like all things are known for a stock and so therefore it is fairly valued at any given time. That's

complete
Equal to its future stream of dividends.
No too. The market finds that information though and it gets priced in.
Phil, there are people that have far better information than anybody else that are trading ahead of these actions. It's not information that is completely known to the market.
Sure. But that information gets serviced via the market process and it gets priced into the stock once people see the movement in price.
No, that's that is a fallacy. That's why hedge funds have been making money for years.
They've been making money for years trading on the fact that the market is not efficient.
You can follow the hedge funds. I mean, look at Jim Simons is not in the room, but he's the only one I'll give you.
Oh god. Okay. All right. I'm gonna I'm gonna end I'm gonna end finance talk. I the one thing I will say is my wife has been doing a lot of trading recently which is how I'm able to somewhat follow this conversation and completely agree with Crest. The one thing I have seen is that there is information that resides with some people that isn't with the retail traders and you can see it every

single day happen like the rug pools are just you know like absolutely crazy. All right, I think this is going to wrap up everything 2025. I think we're done with all of those recaps. We're going to now enter 2026 and do even more news coverage. Try to be better. Thank you everyone for a great 2025. Thanks to all the Golden Twig winners. We'll send out some sort of award. Phil, maybe we'll even give you one this time. I I would like one too. And we will see you all next week.
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