TWIG #366 Türkiye’s Looming Winner and GenAI Gamer Backlash

Matthew Ball was out there making $70,000 a [ __ ] presentation perpetuating this nonsense, right? That made no sense then and it makes even less sense now, you know? So, no, no, no. I'm not letting them off the hook. There were bulls out there and they were pushing the narrative and they were pushing a lot of spend in the space. [music]
Hello everyone and welcome to This Week in Games 366. I'm Jen Dano. to fill the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. Today we have a special crew.
Eric Crest, strategy and investing. I'm here, friend of the founders,
and Laura Tranto. Just, you know, saying hi, talking about puzzle, and then I'll be out again.
Awesome. Well, thank you for coming back in. I know we wanted to have you at the end of the year, but you were off vacationing and lots of far away lands.
Florida, Mexico, is all over.
Man,
Laura's Instagram is wild. So, if you're preview to that, [laughter] it is wild.

Yours is pretty fun.
Now, I have to go look.
I know. Exactly. Mishka, yours is all gym photos. Mine's all like lounging on a boat somewhere with
Well, let's say we wear we wear equal amount of clothing [laughter] in our
All right. And here we go talking about the episode. All right. So, here's what we got going on the episode today. We actually have quite a bit. Fortnite now lets creators publish islands with in-game transactions. There's pros and cons coming out of this which we'll talk through. Meta lays off about 10% of Reality Labs and closes multiple studios. New puzzle game Pixel Flow shows some promise and a little gameplay innovation. We're going to do a mini deconstruction. I shouldn't even say that. We're just going to talk about it. Am has a market report. Am is a global independent investment bank that specializes in games and makes a killer puffer vest. Right, Crest? Oh, the best the best puffer vest you can own [laughter]
comes from Arm. AI is eating the world.

We're going to talk a lot about AI today. And then this feeds into the next article which is Laren who makes Bouldersgate 3 and the upcoming Divinity. They came out and said that they're experimenting with AI on regular things that all of us do every day. And Reddit had a backlash as to be expected in these days. So, we're going to talk about all of those things and give our opinions. But first, just a little update. So, Twig Jr., which is our little segment that we do with our Boys on the Street, they are busy studying up on some games for their next appearance. I think I'm going to have them back quarterly or maybe, you know, every half a year. I think it's fun. I got a lot of great feedback. People love hearing from Jenna directly. I think it's helpful for all of us dinosaurs that are listeners. Henry actually overheard Rocky talking to his friends, humble bragging that he was on the podcast and he's deep into playing Greo and a couple other games I gave them to play. So, I think we created a Crest Jr. Monster. If anyone

else has any 12-year-olds that would like to be on Twig Jr., maybe we have a couple of them and we hear from some multiple kids, just slack me or send me a note at jendeconstructor.com and we'll get you on the list. Send us your kids is uh the update. So [laughter] let's uh we yeah anyways let's talk about a little shilling. So we had two content pieces. One is hiring as a competitive advantage. So basically how top startups hire and how to get hired by them. We had a guest one from our own talent team and then one from Joe Burge from Play Ventures. So that was an interesting fun episode to record and write about. And then the second one is of course I'm going to write about marketing. That's what I do. So we had an article called eight reasons most UI strategies fail as they scale. Self-explanatory what this was talking about. And I just wanted to record with cohort which is a data platform. They have a lot of visibility on a lot of different kind of companies.

But you know some of our clients have had hard time scaling after showing very promising numbers in soft launch. So, what better way to educate myself than to educate everybody else at the same time. So, that was the reasoning for that article. And I'm in London next week. Wish me luck. It's a stabby town. [laughter] Hosting Supper Club, After Dark, and Meta Mixer. Of course, I'm hosting a MetaMixer because I talk about UA [laughter]
all the time. I thought it was really funny. I think in Slack Neil Long was like, "Hey, I Googled PGC after dark and what came up wasn't what I thought it was going to [laughter] was like naughty."
Uh, you never know be there or you know,
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let me just do a little summary of what's going on because there actually is a lot going on. So on January 9th, Epic officially enabled in island transactions, allowing creators, so this is UFN guys, to sell gameplay items, consumables, and access directly to players for V-Bucks within their custom maps. So creators have had access to this since November. So people have been kind of building in anticipation of the green light going on going off last week. So to kickstart the economy, this is a cool thing for creators. They get 100% of the V-Bucks value minus platform fees and taxes until January 31st of 2027. After that, the split drops to 50%. So, it's important to note that what platforms fees mean. It's actually quite a bit. So, it really kind of works out to 74% of the money spent for the first year and 37% afterwards. There is some controversy. One is over loot boxes. So,

while Epic previously removed randomized llamas from Save the World, this is like forever ago, the new rules allow creators to sell paid random items, which is basically loot boxes, and provided that they disclose the numerical odds and that they follow regional age restrictions. So, this puts all of the legal risk on developers. A lot of the community backlash has been coming up from steal the brain rot. So, while it might remind you of the Roblox game Steal a Brain Rot, these are not the same game. This game is a let's say a kindly a a ripoff of the other one. So, this game has become the face of the controversy. So, they introduced a high price loot box bundle and it has boosted odds. Then, there's also a like, for lack of a better term, a gambling wheel. So the wheel is you spend a hundred V-Bucks, so it's about a dollar, and you just get prizes including in-game items or currencies. So a lot of people are

saying, "Hey, you know, like this is for kids and this feels really gambling going on here." So the final piece just to note is Epic maintains a monopoly on pure cosmetics. So creators cannot sell outfits or emotes, but they can sell gameplay altering items like speed boosts. So, this is just so that they don't overlap with what Epic already does with its skins business. So, Crest, I think you and Phil are jumping for joy. Epic has finally conceded to all of the pressure coming from Roblox, coming from their investors, coming from just everywhere, and they are trying to create a free-to-play ecosystem. However, it's looking like they have a ways to go. Loot boxes are a little bit difficult to manage. these creators are not sophisticated and they're going to likely, you know, just and there's a bunch of problems like from a legal standpoint. And then the no customization definitely kind of hamstrings some people to do collabs and some other ideas. Well, I applaud what

they're trying to do here. I think they're moving in the right direction for the business. I think they're moving in the right direction for gameplay. It feels like a little bit more guard rails might have been needed or warranted. But Chris, I was absolutely dying to hear your thoughts on this.
This is so this is so hard because I'm just talking on both sides of my mouth on this particular issue and I know that I'm doing it. But in essence, like this is definitely a positive development for independent developers, right? Like you can't have a developer ecosystem without the ability for developers to make money. Like period, end of sentence, right? The engagement payouts were ridiculous from the get-go because it was never going to scale to justify significant development, right? And it never made sense. And we've talked about this ad nauseium. This is not like a participation trophy world, right? [laughter] You just, you know, it it took Tim a few years to come around, but was basically obvious to everybody is that this thing was not going to work with just an engagement type model,

right? Everyone knew that, right? developers, publishers, even people at Epic, right? They all knew that this was ridiculous, right? And so, I'm really, really happy that they're doing this, right? Again, as I've said, I think Epic and Tim are getting significant pressure from their myriad of investors. Like, you have to understand this is not a venture capital backed company anymore. There are huge institutions that own this, you know, and what they see is that Roblox ising destroying them, right? and that they are so scatterbrain in terms of what they're focused on is that they got to fix their platform and make it profitable and make it grow, right, profitably. But I think these this type of pressure has led Tim to do things that he would never ever do. And this is where I'm talking on both sides of my mouth is that basically Tim capitulated to Google on a long-term lawsuit against his principles, right? He caved on his principles around monetizations and basically succumbed to the moni to the pressures of predatory

monetization on UFN and it's only a matter of time before his platform becomes like child torture that Roblox has become. You know what I'm saying? Like it's only a matter of time, right, before that happens, you know? And now then what is he going to say, you know? So, I think it's all good for the ecosystem and it's great for the platform and it's like likely, you know, great for UFN, but I don't know if it's good for Tim and his internal soul, you know, I think he's kind of gone against his principles on this one.
Well, I think you also have been railing on, you know, the gambling oriented items. I think when I see that, you know, hey, spin a wheel and win a prize, like that to me just feels too far in an ecosystem. Now, I don't actually know if that's allowed in Roblox or not, to be honest with you.
Well, dude, yeah, Roblox is gross.
Well, I know a lot of it is gross for sure.
I don't know. I I also agree. I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. I

think that free-to-play mechanics should be allowed, but we should, you know, really be careful around gamblingoriented items. We're look, we're, you know, if you're following us on a Spotify video or YouTube video, we're looking at the wheel that just shows up and steal the brain rot, which is, you know, somebody stole the idea from what was going on in Roblox, put it in. Now, like, listen, that's brilliant, right? like you know we often talk about how people derive innovation from that but so I think this is something we're just going to have to keep an eye on we're going to have to follow if you are a creator in the space just know that the risk is on you if you are going to do loot boxes or you are going to do gambling oriented freetoplay items you really got to be careful
okay all right the reality of it is is that what works in Roblox is the most dastardly monetization schemes and things steal a brain rot where you're literally torturing little children, you know? It's like,
yeah, you're stealing their stuff. Like you you spend all this money to get a

thing and then someone steals it. Now,
that's the design of the game. Okay. So, exactly. What do you think is going to be built on UFN day one, right? It's those games that do exactly that, right? And so, that is now Tim's UFN platform, right? Whether he likes it or not, right? He can't just ban [ __ ] because he doesn't like it now. like he's un unleashed the floodgates of this trash that is considered amazing. Even grow a garden is the same way where you can steal like items from people's gardens, you know, like and it's all a casino, right? It's all slot machine type mechanics on all these games that have done well. And so those are the games that are going to be replicated on this platform because those are the ones that are successful.
I know.
You know, so anyway,
no, I get it. I understand. It doesn't mean that I feel good about all of it. And I don't know. I wish there were like levels. Like if you spin a wheel and you get something that feels like just cheap versus, hey, I'm going to speed up my gameplay. Anyway, all right. So, let's

go to the next story. But let me just do a quick segue because as this one ramps up, another platform, ironically, for Meta now is going to ramp down. So Crest is going to do a sad story and actually a victory lap I guess as Meta announces significant layoffs to its Reality Labs division that's going to impact the MetaQuest VR gaming division which I work with some folks who have a VR game. So it's kind of interesting to like live through this a little bit. It's not over for VR, but this is starting to feel like when Facebook remember when Facebook did the rugpool on Facebook gaming. And so back in 2010, I was actually working on Farmville back in the day and I was a bit more on the mobile side, but remember when they took out all of the reality features of Facebook Canvas? Farmville went from 84 million MAU to 57 MAU in 2010 like in a single year because they're
talking about the spam. The spam that would be like water my plants. Water my plants. I'm like, yeah, my cow's sad.

My cow's sad. You know, like the you know, help me find the cow. So when they made all these changes, basically it killed an ent entire gaming platform in the span of two years. Okay, I'm done with memory lane. So let's go to Meta now. Maybe killing VR.
Yeah, I mean there's some specific differences here. I mean they made significant investment in this the VR platform, you know, they changed their goddamn name, you know, to Meta, right? I mean I mean he was all in, right?
I know.
There's just no doubt that he was all in. But the latest news is that they're shutting down Twisted Pixel, Senzura, and Armateur Studios. Now, the significance of this is that these guys were acquired and also built some of the best games on the platform with Asgard Wrath, Deadpool VR, and then Resident Evil VR, right? So, like these are like premier studios that are building games that in theory would sell the platform. So what people are basically saying this is the final death rattle of you know Zuckerberg's A16Z Matthew Ball's like metaverse delusion like this is what was

going to happen. So what's really happening is they can't monetize the platform at scale. Like it was all about the engagement that we've talked about is that people are buying the hardware but they're just not buying software, right? And so that's not aing platform, right? And that's exactly why Microsoft is struggling because actually no one's buying the hardware either. But the fact is that when you need billions of dollars to subsidize a platform, it just can't exist for longer period of times. And eventually again what we've seen is the music has stopped. Now, the pivot to AI glasses kind of makes some sense to me personally,
but it just kind of is proof positive. What we've been saying VR is not a mainstream platform and it can't go on with just even with unlimited capital. What's unique about this is they just had such a huge investor in Facebook and Meta is that like even with that kind of investment, it didn't work, right? And so like it is just not a viable platform. So sad. I mean, I actually

personally like VR and we actually need a new platform, but VR is just not it, unfortunately.
So, Crest, I mean, you know, sadly, you're not wrong about what's going on with VR. I pulled a little bit of data, but first I just want to say I'm always sorry when people get impacted and studios get closed, especially ones as quality as those studios. But first, I want to play let's guess how much Meta Reality Labs lost since 2020. You want to take a a guess of like how much they've put into this platform? It's in the billions.
Four billion.
125 billion.
70 billion.
No.
70.
Oh, that includes all the other hardware stuff.
Yeah, it's Well, it's everything in reality lab. So, you got Horizon, you've got all of the work. But that's how much they have spent.
And I imagine that they spent 70 billion on AI like last year. Like it's I imagine I don't know. Anyway, so on the data side, I pulled a chart from it's called the ESA essential facts 2025. So this is current data on platform usage.

Just a reminder, this is US only data. The ESA is our kind of like lobby system in the US. But what it shows is platform usage across generations. So you have, you know, Gen A, Z, Millennials X, and then you have Crest in the Boomer category. So this shouldn't this shouldn't be shocking to anyone but mobile is the highest of all of the platforms for all of the age groups. You know everything is above 80% and you know even Gen A is what 85 87%. And when you look over on the right of this chart basically you know sadly no one is playing VR games especially if you're under a millennial. So that has about what 14% usage for Gen A you know Gen X and boomers don't even know. I can't even put this thing on without throwing up, you know, 3 seconds without playing it. So the strategy is how do you take a successful game in VR and take it to other platforms because the future is not sadly in VR the it hasn't grown and

it's just you know when your addressable audience is only you know 14% of you know the bottom three generations it's just how do you make money in that mishka
yeah I don't know like today's episode like the second part is going to be a lot about Gen AI and I was kind of you know projecting when going through this because the exact same folks that were very bullish on VR and AR and really believed it was the future and we're trying to make it a future like I remember in 2015 or 14 where they brought these things to Best Buy and they were like Oculus is the thing and they tried multiple different variations co seemed to be the way and this never happened. So, I'm not saying AI is not happening or anything like that, but I'm just perplexed, maybe, pun intended, on how Meta got this so wrong for such a long time because I don't know anybody who was bullish on VR even during the co times except Zuckerberg like that. He

seemed to be like all about it even going on JR.
I was optimistic for it too. I'll own that. I Yeah. The only issue I saw is that Yeah. the is mobile's easy to get. And I think if I look at if I mean just looking at the gener generational split, this stuff's expensive, right? So if the younger generations are using mobile and they're not picking up virtual reality, I mean one, the headsets are heavy. Two, they're expensive. So how do you get it in the hands of everyone and have enough people playing this content for? I think something where the hardware is not there yet. I stand by that and I my hope is that this is not it's not a it's never going to happen. It's just the timing is not right now. I still think the tech is cool. The immersiveness when I played when I've put on I don't own an Apple Vision Pro or was Yes, there it is. It's one of the most immersive things I've experienced. It's just I don't have a lot of use cases for it. I'm not dropping $3,500 on it and I have the MetaQuest 2. That thing dies like it's heavy. I'm sweating. I'm playing Beat Saber and it's just like I'm covered in sweat. Everything's wet. It's

not as sleek as you pick up your phone and you can, you know, do your little Pixel Flow game. Put it down. It's not the right type of tech for right now or for the generation, but it doesn't mean I think it's never going to be.
Let's not like revise history here. I think Laura's right, but I'm saying Mish Mishka. We had McKenzie. We had the the [ __ ] that wrote Metaverse. He [ __ ] wrote a book called Metverse, right? About VR, about Ready Player One [ __ ] right? We had A6 popping [ __ ] about this foring years. They were bullshitting this. McKenzie was out there actually selling their wares to like everyone that would listen and doing strategies around building UGC and metaverses and it was all [ __ ] right? And it didn't make sense to anybody that even thinks about this stuff. But these guys were pushing this narrative for years and making a [ __ ] ton of money doing so, you know? And so like no, they're not off the hook, you know? Like billions of dollars were

spent because of this [ __ ] right? And like there are people that need to be hopeful and be held responsible. Matthew Ball was out there making $70,000 a [ __ ] presentation perpetuating this nonsense, right? That made no sense then and it makes even less sense now, you know? So, no, no, no. I'm not letting them off the hook. There are bulls out there and they were pushing the narrative and they were pushing a lot of spend in the space.
But on the hook, they stay. Isn't there a little difference between VR and the metaverse? So like Tim Sweeny's vision is interoperability, not necessarily with a headset.
I I don't know. I think there's like a little bit of a distinction in my mind between like I'm going to put a headset on and live in a VR 3D world versus like interoperability of tech and engine and like I still think there's something interesting about that. They were pushing that this new metaverse was going to be a ubiquitous platform that

had open standards. It was like the internet for 3D engagement, right? That was the definition that they threw out there and it was complete and utter [ __ ] right? Because there was way too many constituents that are out there trying to make money at this stuff and they're not going to agree to some open standard, right? But that was the vision that they saw and what Facebook and Meta were trying to do is build that open standard right with their operating system because they don't want to be beholdened upon the platform holders including Apple, Google and Microsoft to run their software right so they wanted a new OS and that was his vision right like and none of that made sense frankly even though Meta had the money to actually do it right
this is the [ __ ] they were pushing and it didn't work
and I know we're going to get to the AI stuff soon but I think AI is different because AI is pushing a platform. It's a tool. It's a kind of a different calculus when it comes when you think about AI, but we'll get to that in a minute.
You don't have to wear it.
Yeah. I I do have to say about like I

know you go hard on Matthew Ball because of one book, but nevertheless, like you can't let the companies off the hook like if somebody gives me a their let's say perception or vision of the future and I end up spending a house on it, it's also my fault for believing it. It's not like like he has a command over like meta and unity and everybody else by releasing a book. They believed in his vision of the future and he believed in his vision at that time. So you know McKenzie is a different thing. They actually get paid to consult.
He worked for McKenzie. He was an adviser for sure and Mackenzie believed
he was the one responsible for McKenzie pushing this narrative and I think he ultimately he got fired. Right.
Eric is on the accountability [laughter] train right now.
I Yeah. I don't think he worked for McKenzie. I think he was an adviser for them. But nevertheless, I'm just saying that yes, you can write all kinds of things. But nobody forced these companies to make this. And he wasn't on like an investment board at EA or anybody saying

like we're going to do this and everybody said like, "Okay, yes, because you wrote a book." It's the companies believed in that future and they ended up investing. So just want to I don't think this is Matthew Balls doing the whole metaverse. Matthew Ball was on the in the ears of many people at the highest levels at places like Warner and places like Facebook and bases, you know, like people that were making these huge investments telling them that this is the future, right? And they executed based upon that input as well as McKenzie, which they spent gajillions of dollars. like this is all part of the old drift that they had going on with that at that time and it never made sense then and I was talking about it then right now again and in retrospect it makes even again less sense so all right let's move on
I wonder if it was FOMO from like missing mobile is like oh we don't want to miss mobile you know anyway speaking of mobile let's go to a mobile game so this game is called Pixel Flow so Pixel Flow is a hybrid casual puzzle game that

got some recent press that I saw Uh so within the last 3 months of launch the game is beat a lot of standards. It's becoming it's a very early success story and it's uh from Istanbul back creators. So when I checked sensor tower a few days ago it was number 38 top revenue in the US in the last 30 days. So that's pretty respectable. When I was looking at it in the charts like you know going against some powerhouses I was like huh.
And this is inapp purchase only. It's not even showing the inapp ad revenue. And that's what's impressive because it is noted that it is a hybrid casual game and it is Laura will talk about this. You know, obviously it does get into ads fairly quickly. It features a unique pigpowered mechanic. So the little icon is this most adorable little yellow pig. And so the mechanic players manage a conveyor belt of pigs that shoot colored balls to clear pixelated cubes. We'll show you a video in a second. I just wanted to say that, you know, I'm always out here saying, "Where's the

innovation? and we're something a little bit different. And what I loved is that this is finally something different. It's not like revolutionary different, but I I love that somebody has put something out that looks different than another match three emerge game. And so we're looking at a little bit of video now of how it works. The cool thing is that in the middle of the screen is usually like some sort of picture and that you're kind of taking away the pixels in the picture which really sets it up for a ton of amazing brand collaborations. Like I think that's the next stage for them. So anyway, let me just tell you a little bit more about it. It is from two developers in Turkey. They did a previous hit that was called Twisted Tangle and then after I played a bunch of levels, I really felt like it had a smooth entry and onboarding. They didn't spam me with early ads. I was which I was appreciative for. The artwork is really cute. It's perfect for brand collaborations. So, the UA is something I have I have some feedback

on. They have a long way to go. You can definitely tell that they are early, that they're small. They need some UA help on creative. They did some cool ones. We're looking at a picture of like what is this called? Like the famous painting with the like oh
Munchins scream. Yes.
So I you know I think the game allows itself to really collaborate with a lot of like artwork or brand collaborations and I think this is going to be the key for them going forward. But that's just my hot marketing take. Puzzle queen, please go forth.
Jen, how many levels did you play until?
I got to like 20. Okay. Because when you said it didn't spam you with ads early on, I agree with you there. But then once I hit So I played till 35 and not because I wanted to stop, but because one, I thought the level started to hit this wall of impossibility and two, I was getting an interstitial video ad every other level. And so [laughter] yes, early on it was very I was like, "Ah,

okay, it's not so bad." And then I was just I was like, "Oh, here's where it is. Here's where they get you. And I had I was going through their inapp purchases in in the game. Oh, I didn't have a chance. So, homework for me. I wanted to look because sometimes you can see in like sensor tower and those the top purchases. My guess is a lot of that revenue comes from the 799 purchase of no ads. When I hit 35, I hit one of the I think it must have been the second or third hard level. That [ __ ] was so difficult to pass. And then I started to lean on the boosters. They are now I had not spent yet. So, I had just naturally acred the coins from getting to level 35 that you win after every level. I think I was just under maybe 3,000 coins. Those boosters are so expensive. They drained me as soon as I needed them. So, the monetization is actually very it they're going hard on it. And I don't know whether it's intentional or just slightly like not balanced correctly, but it seems like the numbers I mean the numbers are showing. Yeah, there it is ad based except they do have AP revenue

that's per that's performing well. So these charts that we're showing on here, I just took a look sensor tower. Thank you very much. I looked at revenue over the last 30 days and I decided to create a little benchmark group for them. So I took match factory, obviously PixelFlow as we're talking about it. There were elements of PixelFlow that reminded me of Magic Sort and I'll go I'll explain why just after this, but I threw that into the mix. I also put Hexa Sort in here. I put Match 3D and I put Block Blast. So if you look Yes. It's I feel like if the market share for revenue, Match Factory is still number one, but PixelFlow in this group is number two than Magic Sort. Now, I know that if we go to downloads, that's kind of where I feel like the everything changes. And Block Blast, and I did a little research on them in terms of market share for downloads, Blockb Blast is killing it. I didn't do more than a highlevel decon on Block Blast, but I was thinking why. One, they're going hard on UA, and two, they're doing a ton of experimentation. So that I think is a story for another

time. But I do think it's interesting these two games that are kind of similar in this hybrid casual space, how different they're performing. All right, so back to where we need to be, which is Pixel Flow. Couple things. So those rewarded video ads, as Jen said, yeah, early on they're like, "Oh, yeah, it's fine." The first one is level 10. And then let me tell you, they're long. It's not just like you're seeing a quick static ad. I mean, I started to time them and they have the little timers in the corner, but then when you see like your third or fourth timer of the same ad, you're like, "This is not the 30 seconds I was promised." So, I want to say they're 35 35 up to 40 seconds to 45 seconds of ads. I would guess, let me see, there was a video I would say. Oh, yeah. My my [clears throat] guess is that they're earning a lot of money just from the ads based on how frequently they're appearing. So, why I brought up ma magic sort there's where as I was playing and yes, let me applaud them. golf claps. It is innovative. It is something different, but when you hit sort of these levels kind of beyond the

let's grab you and pull you in levels. They start just like magic sort. You can't see what the next level is that you need to kind of click on. So in this game, you click on the little pig. He jumps to the tile trough trough and then he like you jump him on the conveyor belt and then he's like shooting all around. That tile trough is the same premise as it is in tile match games where it limits the amount of play you can do. So you're limited in that. So that means you can only pick so many before you kind of hit your fail state for the level. And then when you're choosing what colors to reduce kind of to remove, that's how you select what pig you're going to use. And then they hide what color that pig is until the one right above it is selected. And Magic Sword does the same thing. And there's a feeling that you can't control the level or it removes to me a state of agency for the player and that strategic what am I going to choose because then you can't see and I can't tell you how many times I made a wrong choice and failed a level. And this was one of I think one of the downsides to Magic

Store is that you that it adds too much to random chance that then you're have this weird mix of you have to quickly put the pigs on and you can have as many like there's a limit to the conveyor belt and you have the Tyler. So you're managing it. There's a little bit of twitch action here, but then it takes away your ability to kind of plan accordingly. So there's two things they're going to have to work on. Figuring out how to balance that correctly if they want to scale this further and then also adding variety to gameplay. And again, caveat, level 35 because I got stuck. But that is, I think, what they're going to need to unlock scale.
Got it. Cool.
It looks a little bit too soon to celebrate because basically what's happened is that they've
they're just spending spending spending on UA, but we haven't seen what the longer term retention is yet, right? So, whenever you look at downloads and revenue and you see that they're exactly the same chart, you know, more or less that you have to see what it looks like when they stop spending on UA. But so far so good though. I would say that their D1 to D3 is quite strong, but I would imagine their D7 to D30 drops

quite significantly. That would be my finger in the air estimate.
Pretty typical for for these type of games. You know, I downloaded it. As soon as you put it in, I was like, "This is turkey through and through." Like, it's really that operational excellence. They shipped it really fast. There's incremental innovation everywhere. Like the splash screen was straight up dream. You open up a game. It's just like they don't do it. There must be like one memed who just does all the splash screens in Istanbul. [laughter] And then uh and then like the UI is Brawl Stars like it was very much that sort of a 2D kind of a interesting you know whatever game play super accessible very easy to play very addictive early on. It was unique to me at least and it was evolving so you always get those new pieces that kind of pushes the retention again. I don't know if they're the first one with this gameplay. I looked at sensor tower a little bit. I saw ring bus that came afterwards but this is essentially the same game. So expect like you know at least 15 of these to come out of the city in inside like next

couple of months. I am more bullish than Crest who's skeptical. They of the future success and I'm going to use a case of Magic Sword which Laura you mentioned before and this is the graphs if you're looking at Magic Sword. So it launched in kind of first half of 2024 and this game is also from Istanbul. It has scaled very nicely. It's making like 7 million in net revenue a month plus add maybe like 20 to 30% inapp ad revenue. So probably 10 million a month. Again an upstart team. This is kind of their first game that scaled. But overall they've had 25 million downloads. Probably 57 million in net revenue plus enough ads. But longevity is probably still an issue because when you look at these graphs and I expect this game to have a similar graph is what you mentioned is the long-term retention because we can see that the monetization follows exactly the same graph with download. So the moment you

stop spending on UA is the moment they start going down in revenue. And again as you continue spending on UA on the other hand you are probably getting return on your investment. in these type of games is probably even faster because the monetization is pushed so aggressively early on. So I expect this game probably reach to same type of heights that Magic Sword and Grand Games is experiencing laying perfect opportunity for their follow-up games. And again, I just have to give a golf clap or whatever kind of a clap to this team because this is a startup of just couple of guys
who built a game that scaled to such a massive height so quickly. It's like we're back, baby. This is mobile. This is how it's supposed to be. This is what we're used to. And again, what I love about Turkey is that they operate in an alternate reality. Like they're not, you know, throwing ashes on each other like, "Oh, the the gaming is gone. There's not

there's not this, there's not that. It's so hard." They're just shipping games. Two people. Yeah, sure. Let's do it. Let's ship it. No, you know, AI this, AI that. They're just making money and making games. So, good on you guys. Keep going because this is what we love seeing. Web stores, you've seen what good looks like, but have you experienced great? App charge is the direct to consumer platform that powers over half a billion dollars in transactions each year for top studios. They're not just another vendor. They're backed by Supercell and built by monetization veterans from Moonactive, Plague Tikica, and other industry giants who understand the difference between merely functional and the truly exceptional. What sets them apart? deeply personalized web stores with custom design offers, industry-leading monetization features, seamless in-game payment integration, and a robust SDK. While 70% of top grossing games already have web stores,

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All right, Mishka, why don't you take us through a room's report?
I actually have two reports. There's two reports. Let me start off with something that is close to my heart which is marketing [laughter] and and so the uh the marketing report is the first one I want to talk to because Appslier released state of gaming marketers report together with unity and news and I'm just going to give you three takeaways that I took from this and there's a link below in the description so please click tab push whatever you do to get your information. Number one takeaway, which is something

that is obvious for probably everybody, is there was two and a half thousand creative variations per quarter produced by top gaming spenders, which is up by 30%. So that means that the top spenders are making almost 30 creatives a day. 30 creatives a day. And the acquisition channels are flooded with different type of creative variations thanks to AI. And what I assume is that the lifetime of a single creative has just collapsed and it keeps collapsing. The moment you find something good, you probably have like 3 days before it's, you know, up to rotation. And another tidbit of information this in this report was that the emit and top publishers are pulling away for smaller ones who can't produce creatives at such a volume, which again goes back to the previous game talking about how impressive it is. just two guys are able to ship and scale this game while fighting, you know, companies that are making 30 creatives a day.

Second takeaway was that the total UA spent in 2025 was $25 billion. Uh, Apploven got probably a big chunk of that and 50% of that flow to the US markets alone. Interesting enough, also 50% of all the spent went towards casual spend. And that is probably the reason because not only do they have the LTV coming in from inapp purchases, but also through ads that allows them to bid at a more balanced LTV. Midcore games rose sharply, but that was only on iOS because Android did it was not performing and ad dollars actually surged on midcore by 43% in on iOS US. So that's how much you can think the CPIs are going up. And the question is of course they don't have this data but what's the percentage of web shop kind of contributing to this because we know that inapp ads are contributing to the spend and the CPI rise in hybrid casual and in casual gaming. So probably web shops are also

having their impact.
I think apps flyier has a lot of connectivity to some of the web shop folks and so that is helping. The other one is just we love AI. AI in UA is helping to solve the IDFA at challenges. You know, basically all of that is in a sense over because of what AI has been able to do with, you know, Crest's favorite topic, fingerprinting. You know, basically trying to solve that. So I that's a really good point that they're seeing a benefit on iOS.
Yeah. Yes. Exactly. And final one was of course China. So the growth of UI spend for Chinese HQ publishers went up by a fifth to reach 35% of the total market. And especially when we look at the territories where they grew aggressively where they expanded their spend aggressively was US plus 15%, UK plus 26, Germany plus 31, France plus 34. So all the key Western markets that's where

the Chinese publishers are advertising aggressively. Not surprising given the type of games they have, which is all type of games.
Yeah, that really goes to all of our predictions and more data
showing that the Chinese publishers are really figured out how to tackle the West.
Yeah. So, link to that report in description. I suggest everybody reads it because marketing is the half of the coin and on mobile probably even more than half of the coin of how to succeed. The second one is from the puffed men and women of Aim which is puffer jacket people. [laughter]
Oh, some of them are going to gym actively. Shout out to you know the few of you. So what is a global independent investment bank specializing in gaming? This is their description in practice. This is my description. If you are selling or buying a company investment bankers broker those deals. So

is the company you call if you're an apploving or aristocrat and you're offloading your games business. It's also if you're a dream and the VCs want to cash out, you call investment bankers and they will come and they will take a percentage by finding you a buyer or helping you to sell. So
I should have been an investment banker in a prior life, man.
Yeah, it's uh
I know we all should have been.
I know. What was I doing?
And unlike lawyers, they take a percentage. Employers take a fee, they take a percentage. So the bigger the deal, the happier the banker. Anyways, so enough with AR and more about their report. So they do these quarterly reports together with invest game which are very good actually. Like I'm honestly these are very good reports. Some takeaways from the report just five six pieces. I think what was interesting is Steam maintaining its double digit growth trajectory. So 20% year-over-year growth on Steam PC gaming. This was awesome. And what was awesome is also how it balanced the growth between the proven franchises like Battlefield 6 and

breakout titles like Arc Raider. So both new and old are performing well on Steam. Console revenues expanded 30% year-over-year. And again, this is Nintendo and Sony very much driven by robust third-party content performance. Not Microsoft. I know what Chris talks about Microsoft third party.
We are not talking about Microsoft today unless it's nice things. It's Microsoft has Minecraft which is an amazing game and yes it is.
Anyways um so mobile gaming inapp purchases spend remain stable driven by monetization depth rather than install growth. So installs actually kept going down while monetization was stable. Again we don't know what the impact is of inapp ads were they increasing or not. Nor do we know what was going on with web shops. Like we've seen some public companies post their reports like Stillfront was recently there showing growth of web shop revenues. So that's not shown in these ones. Roblox payouts

grew by 41% year-over-year. Like Roblox is just crushing. I know Chris hates this, but these are payouts. This is the actual revenue distributed to the companies making games on Roblox. M&A volume growth of 34%. But when you look at behind these numbers, behind the 39 deals that happened is that the transaction value collapsed from 5 billion to half a billion. This doesn't make happy bankers. Let me tell you that [laughter] lawyers got the same fee, but that's not good. No bueno.
They must be going around with mice nuts on their jackets this year.
It's a You know [laughter] that
I'm going to I'm going to have to buy them a vest with mice nuts on the back now.
Oh, you should. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So, so deals are happening but the size is not the same. And then finally, surprise surprise, investments are mostly flowing into gaming tech including AI which we shall talk soon and mobile gaming

studios out of Turkey. Turkey because they ship and make money. That's it.
They do. [laughter]
So, arim.co a Ram.co and you'll get the full report. 50 slides and graphs. Quite a quick read.
And if you forget, at GDC, Crest will be wearing the ARM vest. Just follow them around. [laughter]
I I I will not I will not. No way. All right. First off, yeah, ARM is kind of the ax on gaming. If you want to sell your company, they are supreme. No doubt. The report is [ __ ] beautiful, dude. It's like it'll make McKenzie proud, right? So, they do a great job on the report, whoever is putting it together. Again, there's a lot of spin in this report. like you know you know they're pushing their own book like everyone you know so that's part of the goal of this report is to get visibility so I don't blame them on that but the reality of things are they are very slow out there's some bright spots with obviously the Switch 2 growth of Steam

in China Roblox is still a positive from the headlines perspective but not necessarily positive for the industry folks but BC investments are absolutely non-existence M&A is anemic and the growth growth is steady but far below historical standards and historical numbers. So, this is a very mature market and we have really no catalyst coming up. You know, GTA is going to be good for take two, right? And and console as a whole.
Yeah,
it's going to be a slog for the next 5 years. Just just to be clear.
Awesome. All right, Laura, take us through your uh AI is eating the world. So actually my my title was presentation
I summarized it so we're not going to go through every slide even though I did think about doing that. I'm just kidding. So it's vibe coding and AI generated assets are the next platform. So RIP AR VR what's growing from its dashes is generative AI. This is

Benedict Evans. So he does I think a by-early presentation of one of his predictions of and the assessments of the market and he did one on generative AI and I was like oh okay this is long. So I started going through and I was like actually I think he has there's some takes in this and one bullet point I pulled was chatpt which I learned is at 800 million weekly active users. So what does this mean? So one everyone's using it. So where are these eyes going? Well, if they're not going to mo well, so they're still on mobile, but then if they're not going to ARVR, what are people doing? Well, a lot of them are using AI tools and then how does that apply to gaming? So, one of the one of the perspectives he has is gaming and gaming content will have a new look as vibe coding grows and AI generated assets improve. We know I mean we know just being in the industry, they're not perfect right now. You want to make assets for your game. You can use AI to help you, but it I think right now is a struggle, at least from my perspective and what I've used in the past. It can't go from start point to end point and

something that you can necessarily ship at the at a very high polished quality doing exactly what you want it to do. But this also means a couple things. One, we look at the new games coming out. They don't need that necessarily that high quality the quality of polish. And something really stuck with me, which is this is going to open up a new wave of hobbyists to be able to find kind of this path towards professional or path towards releasing content for us without needing the same skills that we needed growing up to start. Like I remember this stuff doesn't didn't exist. If I wanted to make something, I'd have to draw it myself. And let me tell you, I'm a pretty shitty artist. And then looking at kind of the overall like we look at the younger generations, they're the ones that are going to be playing games. There's been a lot of studies on Gen Z and alpha's shortened attention spans. I mean, if we look at Australia's ban on social media for youngans, which probably came a little too late, it's a growing concern. And when you're part of that same gener, you're making content for your generation. I believe these users will

make better content suited for their peers, potentially better than the current incumbents that are in place. There's two sides that I wanted to call out on this and the biggest issu is issue I say this slightly tongue and cheek is that I use chat GBT so in this example I will use that when I've interacted with it and I got to say I love co-pilot too co-pilot's a little bit different but chat GBT kind of is a very big one it is not as mean or as honest enough to give feedback that will help mold a good game so pitfall one and assuming we fix that problem so let's say chachi grows a backbone is actually giving honest feedback. The issue is will there be an acceptance of critical feedback by this tool? And so for anyone using this and this will shape how this platform kind of grows, is AI viewed as a low-level collaborator or an expert? So if AI and we when these you know for gaming tools is viewed as this low-level collaborator, they're viewed more as like a peeon in the creative process,

then the more positive suggested feedback might be preferred by the creator. So, if you think that this is like some low-level person giving you feedback, a lot of time you want praise. And I see this in the hierarchy of most companies anyway. You're going to be getting, oh, this is so great. Of course, boss, you're doing a good job. And then you're viewed as a subject matter expert regardless of whether you should be evaluated as such. Truly, if the AI on the flip side is viewed as the creator or the expert, then that person that's using AI is going to be heavily relying on the AI to be the expert and be creating things for players. Whoever is doing the creation bit will be taking this as gospel. So, normally would this be bad? I'm not sure. But the only place that I think draws a question is in every little like subtext when you use any sort of tool, it's like AI could be inaccurate. they may generate accurate results. So we're opening up a little bit to if the person that's using this tool has decided, ah AI, you're the person that knows what to do. It's going

to be heavily dependent on whatever inputs that it's using to create the suggestions as this gospel of truth. And in many cases it's not. Maybe it will be, but right now it's not. I mean I'm a big Tik Tok lover as you know. half the content, that's probably an exaggeration, but much of the content is AI generated and we don't know what side I think whenever someone's making content they're sitting on. Are they using this as this is what it should be or is this something that's just kind of boosting my ego for whatever I'm putting out. So effectively I put came to the conclusion we need different creator modes in AI or AI pre-prompting that sets the style and the type of collaboration environment to make the right type of content that we that audiences will find engaging and good. And we're not quite there yet but I do think this is where I'm bullish. I do think we will get there because of this high number of usage, the amount of inputs and the amount of time this is going to be able to iterate and get better. I think it's going to be moving much faster than VR ever was able to.

Any other thoughts on my little hype train for AI?
Can I just say one thing? First of all,
Benedict Dick Evans doesn't know [ __ ] all about interactive, right, or video games. Like this guy is a professional level.
He's a He is B. He is Matthew Ball of AI basically. He is aing [laughter] grifter
and he worked at A16Z. So that all that's that's all you need to know. And so like his whole analysis is [ __ ] [ __ ] right? He doesn't know what the [ __ ] he's talking about. And again, I'm going to say this a million times. I believe in AI. I think it is the next tool that's going to be revolutionizing our economy. There's all kinds of benefits for AI. But creating content, like compelling content for the consumer, again, this ignores the entire whole point of what makes content great is the consumer appetite for it, right? And so, like, yes, it could be good. Even the Tik Tok [ __ ] is crap. But building like what consumers want from a AAA production value, movie, television, and video games, it's gonna be really

almost impossible. So
slow.
I don't think we should be listening to Benedict Evans as we should not have been listening to Matthew Ball [laughter] about what's the future of video games
period. Let me come in somewhere in between [ __ ] [laughter] and and and the beautiful words that Laura said. So it's uh almost 100 pages 100 graphs in this presentation and I assume it would have been better as a presentation because when I was going through it I felt that I'm missing the context. It was just a graph after graph with like oneliner that didn't really
Yeah, I think he presented it slush because I'm like AI is great but like do I need 100 slides telling me that AI is a great tool
you know that I already know it's a great tool for anyway. Go ahead.
Yeah. So, so TLDDR capex investments are getting out of control according to this presentation. What I took away there's limitations to AI growth in form of data centers power just to power those data centers chips clone of LLM and just raw

funds money to make this happen. And he talked about LM having a risk of becoming commodities and also pointing out that the penetration is very high. Then the big thesis was big corpse bundle while startups unbundle. So basically whenever you open up like claude or anthropic has launched a new tool that is part of this big chatbt health and like there's just like endless amount of products Google the same thing and then there's startups that are focusing on niche and either getting evaporated by these big LMS pushing in a product that essentially makes them obsolete or finding a profitable niche that they can go through grow their ARRS as they like to put it while being you know live for 8 months or 3 months and get acquired by one of these big companies and The final slide of this presentation, like spoiler alert, it ends with when automation works, it disappears and it shows a graph of elevator operators kind of like how many there were and at one point there were many of them and then there

were very few. So I'm clearly missing the context that might have been a banger ending but for going through all these slides I was like this is it. Anyways, so in short, the way I've been kind of like if I would have to be very hyperbolic, there's like a two short-term futures that happen from AI. And one is everybody who is super bullish on AI is correct. It's going to revolutionize everything in an incredibly fast speed. In one year, humans don't need to go to work. There's no more tasks. yada yada yada. AI overtakes everything. rapid pace cause mass unemployment and a lot of trouble in the economies. Then there's the other one which is the opposite case is that these promises are inflated and the current market as we know is prompted by a handful of tech companies which are relying heavily on AI for their valuation. The valuations get deflated and then that causes mass unemployment. So you know those are two views of

what's happening next. But I wanted to educate myself more because I saw this in the documents and I was like, "Shit, I need to say something smart." So I watched two interviews. One was with Jensen Hang, the Nvidia CEO, and I took a couple of quotes from him. He said, "What AI will do is make our tasks that we do in our job more efficient." He sees that our job is more meaningful than typing on a keyboard or wrangling spreadsheets. And the point that Jensen was making in his video interview was that AI will drive productivity and productivity leads to more revenue and more revenue will lead to more hiring at the companies which in turn ultimately results in the growth of the overall world GDP because it allows a larger portion of society of people to contribute to GDP growth by powering these people with AI. And I was like, "Oh, that's a very positive view of the future and the impact of AI." And even

Trump tweeted that there will be more jobs because of AI. So I'm like, "Okay, Trump and Jensen are on the same page. Let me find another page that has a constructive criticism towards this." And I found Greek economist Janis Varufakis who is the former minister of economy for Greece, which says a lot and is actually one of most deep faked person on the internet. And so in his interview, he's an economist. It was very interesting because he pointed out right away it's not the question of is AI useful or not. Of course it is and technology is amazing. But his point of view and his perspective was more about who owns AI because when people engage with AI, the AI or the machine pretends to be our servant. whether it's Siri, whether it's Alexa, whether it's the Instacard. And what's really happening according to Yiannis is that the machine trains you to train it even better to know you so well that it wins your

trust. And once the machine has your trust, it can direct your choices. So the next time you're making a purchase decision, you will trust what the machine recommends you without comparing it on your own to what exists in the market. And that means that the owner of the machine or the AI will make a profit on having you to buy what the machine has recommended to you. Sounds like social media. And that profit is essentially what he sees as an economist, a rent on the economy in terms of price inflation. Because that price increase by the machine or you know the Alexa selling you whatever Amazon wants you to sell. It's not the money that goes to companies that deliver to you or the companies that design the product or the companies that manufacture the product but the money goes to a technology company that is recommending you the product and there are examples of this happening. So according to consumer reports and ground work collaborative they revealed that

Instacart which is probably the biggest it's owned by Amazon but it's the biggest grocery delivery company in the world when they used AI technology and they did price testing they saw that customers paid significantly higher prices up to 23% more for the exact same items at the same store leading to increased cost for some shoppers. So they trusted this platform and the platform increased their costs and in the end kind of like AI is not machines that produce or increase productivity but they are machines that determine how we think with the goal of according to Yiannis extracting rent on the economy and in such actually extracting from GDP and not growing it. So
that was uh what the [ __ ] are you talking about dude? Do you realize that Greece Greece's entire economic output is less than what Google makes in a year? Like why are we listening to this guy?
Because he was also an economist on CCP. So that's back to games CCP. He was in

the Russia.
No, no, no. The uh the gaming company
example is online.
That's not even having to do with AI.
That's what airlines anyway. Anyway, Crest, let's Why don't we wrap up on AI and gaming because I do think this is interesting to the audience. talk to us about the laren topic.
All right, let me let me let me just let me AI is a tool like it makes part of the process more efficient and may ultimately reduce costs in game development like in theory, right? But it still needs design. There's many many other parts to this process and I think like all these takes are just very simplistic in their execution, right? And I'm not saying that AI is not revolutionary in its own right, but for game development, it is just part of the process, right? And so there was an article out about the darlings of the industry, Larry, who made Balders's Gate 3. And the original controversy came from when Vinky, who I think he's the CEO of Larian, he was in an interview with our

friend Shrier at Bloomberg talking about AI tools. And they were talking about using AI tools to produce their next game called Divinity. and they were using generating like concept art, producing powerpoints and other early production work of the goddamn game to kind of speed up the prototyping phase and to get to some agreement on the visual direction of the game, right? And so he talked about this interview and it was a very small part of this overall interview evidently and the backlash wasing immediate and it was primarily Reddit, social media, some former lawyer employees like you know bombed them a little bit and some fans and the but the honest truth was that the coverage out there was actually relatively balanced, right? I mean, in the interview anyway, Shrier did show his clear bias in the interview against using AI tools, but nonetheless, I mean, it was relatively fair in terms of the coverage, but what happened was immediately he rescended that and said that he they're not going to be using tools for this purpose anymore. And it's like, dude,

just stop cowtowing to the mob, right? It's your job to experiment with new tech and use it to the benefit of process of making [ __ ] games, right? And great content. AI tools are out there. Like you can't like put that [ __ ] back in a box. You know, devs, should you be using this to help drive efficiencies? That's what makes and it will make games better. And this could be at the expense of some employees. Like I'm sorry, but that's the way it works. Like this is the nature of enabling technologies, whether it's AI or other things, you know. And so what you do is you displace some people and reorg around other skills that m make the process more efficient. I do think AI will be a boon for game development and you cannot limit your usage because some idiot on Reddit and your fans who are 100% going to buy your next game anyway, right? Are bitching and moaning about the use of technology of these type of technologies. So I think this quote was like really good and it was one of the Reddit type comments was developers should use whatever tools are

available to make the best game possible. There's no reason to cater to artists as though their work is uniquely sacred simply because it produces something visually appealing by that logic. Should studios also abandon software that makes programmers more efficient and reduces the number of coders needed? Of course not. Embrace the technology and let people adapt. Period. End of sentence. Stop apologizing for running your studio and do what makes sense regardless of what these idiots are talking about on the internet. Right. That's my kind of
or just don't talk about that and you
No, talk about it. You should you have the freedom to talk about whatever you want.
Well, sure. I think the challenge is in, you know, these weird rules that are getting set up on Steam about AI usage or in the award show. Remember, I think Clare Obscure had to have an award taken away from them
because they had used like AI for like two seconds on something. So part of this is we need to make sure that we don't have rules or guidelines set up that prohibits a crest. Exactly. I agree

a thousand%. I use AI a thousand times every day and it has made me more efficient. It has made me smarter. It has made me better. I just can't imagine in the old days you'd get a bunch of people sitting around the table and brainstorming, you know, to come up with an idea. And I feel like that's what AI allows me to do. It's it replicates the idea of a brainstorm partner and a thought partner. Anyway, I think everyone is being too black and white on this topic just like on all these like we just need to chill out and have better guidelines is my humble opinion.
The comments from the Larry and co-founder were weird because like two sentences stood out when I read this article. The one was quoting, "We decided to refrain from using Gen AI tools during concept art development." And most of the listeners know what concept art is, but it's in gaming, it's a visual research and development phase of games look and feel. It's the process to explore, define, communicate what the game should look like before the team actually commits to expensive production

such as 3D modeling, animation, VFX, UA, marketing renders, so forth. In other words, this is throwaway. Larry is not willing to use AI because of Reddit comments in a throwaway asset creation that helps them to ideulate faster. Like what is it? It's like, you know, like saving the pens from your meeting room. It's like we can't throw them away because that's that's against the nature. But anyways, he kind of also goes against what he said because the next quote is like the more iterations we can do, the better in general the gameplay is. Yeah, we think that Gemini can help with this and we're trying things out across departments. I was like, this is in the same piece. So, so it doesn't make any sense what he said that they won't be using. And then he's saying it really helps us to move faster to come up with ideas and test them so that we can make better games. Literally, what he should say is like, [ __ ] off. We're going to use whatever [laughter] tools at our disposal to make the best game possible based upon our

design. Period. [clears throat] End of sentence. So Chris probably not the best PR consultant you can find but if you mince your word and have that point there that would be good but I just wanted to describe like how most of companies like the beloved developers are using AI in asset creation in graphics for example. So the first step is you train your custom models by uploading your database into a selected tool whatever it is let's say uh scenario and once the custom models are ready so from your previous library you generate across different multiple media types so you can do images you can do video you can do 3D you could do skybox you could do textures but it already has your library this is of course for companies that have that one then once you have uploaded and once you're able to do these custom versions you generate output that can be edited inside that chosen tool with either prompts. So you can say change this, change that. You can do retouches for like fixing specific regions in the images or the videos. You could do outpainting where

you just expand beyond the original bounds. And you can do enhancing where you improve resolution, detail, and so forth. And everything is then stored indexed and searchable inside this tool and accessible only by your organization. It makes sense because your data remains private by default with these tools. The model is customtrained. It's generated content securely contained in the workspace that you have and isolated by a project. So these tools make ton of sense and I don't understand kind of going through like what these tools are. It's like why can't you use it? Dude, you can't assume everyone's using it in this way. I mean this is just one execution of how you use AI tools. So like they could be creating it from the ether and you know and models that are out there like I don't know
we're talking about for companies this size that have their own IP that have their own style. This is how
this is one way though. Yeah, Chris. I mean, there's so many different This is even just creative. Like, what about, you know, co-pilot on coding or pipeline? There's so many other ways.

The fact is that you should be able to do whatever the [ __ ] you want to do, right? Unless it breaks the rules and breaks laws, right? And the only point that they make that actually is somewhat valid is that if you're using art that is out there that the models are trained on to build your own visual style, like there's some issue there potentially, but that needs to be resolved by the courts, right? Not by like some guy on Reddit and bitching to Larry and CEO, you know?
Anything else to wrap up our massive amount of AI talk today?
I think I think we're good. I think we're we're going to cut some portion of it to make it lighter for for for [laughter]
for the listeners to go through.
All right, Laura, lovely to see you. See you in a month. Uh see the rest of you next week. Thanks everyone.
See you see you in Cabo. [laughter] Not not in real life.
I'll be there.
Not in We'll be with you on your Instagram.
Call me. [laughter]
You did it. You made it to the end of the episode. As a fan of the show, it

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