TWIG #385: $100M for Indies, Lilith Goes Casino, Google Play Changes, and Toon Blast Breaks Bad

I want to be clear here. This game is like a billion dollar business. This is not rinky-dink. This is not Angry Birds 2, okay? This is like a real [laughter] game, you know?
I knew it. I knew he was going to go there.
[music]
Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor of Fun this week in games 385. I'm Jen Donahoe heading up the uh the the car talk uh pre-podcast. Today we have
Eric Kress, strategy and investing.
Phil Black, monetization's are.
Mishka Koff, friend of founders and investors.
Google I/O has some updates for Google Play and it's actually really worth paying attention to for mobile folks, PMs and PMMs. I'll break that down for you. Griffin Gaming Partners launched a $100 million fund for indie game developers. We were trying to get to this last week, but lots of Xbox news drops, we missed it, so we're going to get to it today. Embracer is splitting into two publicly listed companies, spinning off Fellowship Entertainment.

We We're not going to have Xbox talk, so we need something to trigger Kress, and that's going to be one of them. Phil brought some fun data on two mobile games, Clash of Critters, which is Lilith's new game, and Coin Board Master is now taking a real shot at Monopoly Go. And then I have revived as a Toon Blast player, and they are Breaking Bad with a celebrity ad featuring Gus Fring. Actually, it's just the actor who plays Gus Fring, but um he is amazing, so we're going to talk IP and collab corner at the end. Should we banter on anything, or do you want to get right into shills?
I guess I'll just start the banter and the shill at the same time. I did write a piece about Roblox and Xbox are both sprinting in the wrong direction, which is getting a lot of attention, and I have to admit, the best comeback of this whole piece was from Joe Forence, you know, who's obviously a Roblox like evangelist. Yeah, I mean it's it's almost religion for him, but his kind of like retort actually makes a lot of sense. But,

I think it's worth a read. I think also the situation that Roblox is in is very, very, very treacherous right now. So, it'll be really interesting to see if they can pull this off. But, basically I'm saying Roblox is in a tough shape cuz going HD makes no [ __ ] sense for the platform.
he basically said that like, "Look, with the for the long-term health of the platform, this makes sense and the audience is ready for this type of content. So, we'll see if he can pull it off." type thing. Joe is the really, really like in tune with this this market's all about, but I thought he did a good job. Actually, what's really funny is that no one really kind of like talked back against the Xbox thesis. Everyone's [laughter] more talking about the Roblox thesis. Cuz everyone wants to believe in the Roblox thesis and I [clears throat] don't think anyone gives a [ __ ] about Xbox
[laughter]
anymore. This was really funny.
Other shows, um, Deconstructor of Fun round table. So, sign-ups are live in the newsletter or on the website. We have a new events tab on the website. The first one is coming up in a little over 2 weeks. It's

at the Zynga headquarters on June 12th. And then we'll have another one in LA on June 22nd, one in Seattle August 6th. So, please come. We'd love to have everyone there. PM, PMMs, live ops, player experience, those are the kinds of folks that we have. We already actually have a lot of people signed up for the San Mateo one, EA, Zynga, 2K, Meta. So, we're going to have folks from all those companies there. Mr. Meschka, you and spirit animal of Deconstructor of Fun John Wright had a fun consulting talk. Were you inspired by the talk we had We actually got a lot of feedback. That one twig we did it was just you and me. We talked the whole
[laughter]
Like, what people don't know is me and John actually talk a lot and I know the the backstories of it and then at some point we're like, "You know what? Do you want to just jump in on a podcast and just have a like a longer conversation and maybe people can take something out of it cuz there's a lot of emotional part that goes into starting a consulting. So, I understood that people found this useful. So, that's good. If you found it useful, like, share, all

that good stuff. And if you didn't, you know, we got two to three episodes coming every week. So, they're all free. Enjoy.
[laughter]
Well, it was adorable. I think it's helpful. I think you you call out what's going on in the industry with all the layoffs. There's a lot of people that turn to consulting. I must get a question every week or every 2 weeks, how do I become a consultant? What are best practices? I do think we should collaborate and write a book because because or or sell a class because I get the question all the time, too. Sounds like you do, as well.
I have a format suggestion for you, Mishka. As I listen to this episode, and I can recommend it. Cuz it's all consultants on this podcast.
[laughter]
Have you ever Have you ever seen Actors Actors on Actors?
No. Actors on
No, this is This is a great I think The Hollywood Reporter puts it on, and it's like actors talking shop. You should lock some of this up.
Consultants in a car.
monthly.
No, consultants in a car doing a cold pitch.
Yeah. Take us a Take a super car, and

we'll take a ride. Maybe Maybe a Porsche that that one of you made Oh, maybe McLaren, and then we'll just talk about consulting. I bet I bet there will be many more consultants after after that show.
[laughter]
Uh all right. Correction, Mishka.
Oh, yes, one correction.
right?
Yeah, I messed up a game name. People started pinging me like, "What was that game you talked about that you played with your daughter?" So, we have clearly a a seasoned audience that has kids. And so, that game that Mike Morhaime suggested I play, which is phenomenal, is It Takes Two. And I said Us Two. The game is It Takes Two, and it is such an interesting Like, I'm just going to shill it a little bit cuz it's a story about parents who are splitting, and their daughter is crying. And so, the parents turn into into toys and so your mission is on this split screen to play with your you know your kid and to kind of like take these arguing parents through these insane adventures as mini characters that eventually they kind of

reconnect and become you know a couple again and they the kid is happy and so forth. So phenomenal game, phenomenal story. Yeah, I love it.
I think it's an EA title and I think that studio has a sequel to that game.
Yeah, phenomenal.
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Let's go into our first story. So, Google I/O was last week, you know, it's like Google's Super Bowl. So, they had a bunch of announcements around Google Play. So, I wanted to talk about that here for people. One, I thought this was super cool and something to really pay attention to especially from an ASO angle. AI conversational game discovery. Google introduced Ask Play, an AI-powered conversational search overlay within the store, and integrated direct game deep linking into the standalone Gemini app. So, basically what happens is players can now find games using natural contextual dialogue rather than standard keyword searches. So, you can

just open up your app and say, "Hey, you know, find me the top RPG that has cute little critter fantasy elements from Lilith Games." So, you now you have to think through how search is different. The second one, I I know you guys love this and just will not [ __ ] on it. The global rollout of Play Games Sidekick is the in-game overlay. It's expanding to all participating titles this summer. It places platform-level AI game tips, active rewards, and a new social layer. So, showing your friends live gameplay and achievements, it's directly over the game without requiring an SDK update. The third one is automated live ops and custom store listings. Phil, you must be peeing your pants with excitement. This sounds like a PM thing. Google launched agentic catalog management in the Play Console to automate bulk skew imports and global pricing updates. Additionally, clicking a trending keyword inside the console allows Gemini to instantly auto-generate a tailored custom store listing. Oh my

god, for those have to manage the store, this is sounds amazing. And then last one is passive churn defense and failed payment buffers, another like Phil, these are all for you. The The default account recovery window for failed sub- subscription renewals, like expired credit cards, was doubled from 30 to 60 days. So, Google launched a new native API enabling real-time tier downgrade or retention offers the exact millisecond a player hits cancel. So, I think many of us have dealt with, you know, when your card expires, how do you keep those players and that returning revenue engaged? And so, that is a feature for that. So, public service announcement want people to pay attention to and my taking coming out of this, really these AI features, you know, I I know that there's a backlash from players, but this is like the stuff that I think we need to pay attention to that makes our lives easier. It's all this back-end stuff. So, PMMs, yes you, please listen to this or UA or ASO people, you need to do a

deep dive into your keywords because this is going to have to change your strategy. So, typically in the old day we would just stuff keywords, right? Like you work with those companies and it's like here are the top keywords, but because players are going to now search for this differently, show me a deck builder that doesn't feel pay-to-win as an example, you have to change how you're going to do your keywords. So, very different strategy and then I you know, like I said, Phil, I think, you know, the the catalog system is going to be super helpful and finally on the level up program, I don't have a great update. I think Google Play is coming back next couple weeks with a comprehensive update to level play. If you recall, if you participate, you get a 5% kind of knocked off the rate that you have to pay. So, that program update is coming soon, but what you do need to know is you have to have psychic enabled and you need to do that by July 31st to be eligible for that program. So, just just a heads-up on those things. Phil, now I've called you out 100 times because

this sounds fun to you. What do you see?
I actually wonder if this is competition from web stores. Like they actually have to get off their ass and actually do something. So, maybe we're going to see like more updates from Google Play. The problem I have is like, okay, you do these updates, maybe they increase app store discovery. The shocking thing that I talked to Eric Seufert about when I went on his podcast was how much of this revenue basically rebounds. So, anytime you increase LTV, that just means you can bid more in the ad auction. And if everyone's having that increase, that means everyone can bid more. Like it's a shift out in income for everyone. And so how much of the gains the ad networks make, it feels illusionary. It doesn't actually increase your LTV. It's not increasing your ROAS. And that's been troubling me for a long time. And his point was like, look it, you've always been paid in mobile by like your revenue multiples. Like you're not really growing margin, you're just basically growing these revenue multiples. I wonder how many of these things can actually make an impact.
The first one is just how do you improve search, which isn't necessarily always

paid when you do keyword optimization on your store page or on your website in your ASO. That's organic in my mind. Well, listen, there are versions of it that are paid, especially on Apple. But here, that's actually organic.
Who's benefiting off of these changes?
Your organic team. So ASO is the ability to like, you know, customize everything so that when you're searching for a game in the store or you're searching in a Google browser or now you're searching in Gemini, the ability for your game to pop up becomes a little bit easier if you optimize the language that you're using so that when somebody types in, I you know, like I'm Mishka, I want to find the hardest RTS with a Greek ancient Age of Empire theme.
Mythology.
Somebody needs to think of Yes. Okay, mythology.
This is the new paradigm then, right Jen? It's like how do you write towards AI? Cuz I had I had a client come through my door and she I was like, oh, how did you find out about me? She was

like, oh, I typed like economy design into Gemini. And I was like, oh, that's new.
Jesus, really?
Yes. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was fascinating. And so like there's this economist Tyler Cowen who he he just wrote he wrote a book called the greatest of all time economist. He's like, look it, I'm writing this for AI. And I didn't really understand what that meant until recently, until like that person came through my door. But if this is the case, it's like, okay, what is Gemini training on? Like how do I appeal to this LLM?
So So, hold on. So So, we just call this the biggest gaming podcast in the world? And it will become the biggest gaming podcast in the world if we just start calling it.
That's what Mr. Jason
[laughter]
Probably the biggest gaming insider podcast in the world.
Yes. So, it's it's basically updating your ASO and SEO strategies for AI. And there I Like I said, I forget the abbreviation for SEO for AI. There's a new Like GEO or

something. Uh So, this was a GamesBeat exclusive. Griffin Gaming Partners launched a $100 million special opportunities fund to provide project financing for indie game developers. What's nice about this? The fund writes checks from hundreds of thousands to several million per deal structured as revenue share instead of equity stakes. Griffin has already funded 15 titles including Menace, which sold over 250,000 copies in under 3 months on Steam. Tim Bender, CEO of publisher Hooded Horse, serves as the managing director alongside Griffin managing partner Nick Tuatso. Uh Advisors include film producer Dylan Clark, The Batman, Penguin, and Brand Stewart, Russell Binder, Five Nights at Freddy's and Angry Birds. Griffin manages 1.5 billion total and has backed AppLovin, Scopely, Discord, and recently acquiring mobile porting studio Play Playdigious. The fund targets a real financing gap because venture math fails studios

rarely selling above 40 million giving indie capital without equity dilution. I think I get this question all the time from small to medium companies. Like, nobody's funding that range. So, it sounds like they identified a nice market fit here. So, Chris, take it.
First of all, it is clear that the tourists are gone, right? A16Z is a Y Combinator want to be. They're not investing in games anymore. Lightspeed basically shut down their entire consumer group in October, right? So, let's pour one out for our friend Moritz. And then when we're you know, when we were in Turkey, we saw all the OG VCs, the real VCs that invest in the space like including London Ventures, Gardner was there, Play Big Craft, Griffin, Litan, of course. There are a few missing, but they were a lot were present at that event. And so it's really good to see these OGs back investing the way things should be invested in, right? Versus these huge funds that had no [ __ ] business

investing in games, period, end of sentence. So, why the Griffin thing is important is that this is not a venture capital fund. That's why it's important because investing in these type of things as a venture capitalist makes no [ __ ] sense as I've been saying for the last [ __ ] four or five years, right? So, this is a fund which is set up to invest in revenue share with these games. And so, you are there acting basically as as as a project management finance similar to movies for gaming. This makes sense. This makes total sense, right? And so, anyway, this is the way it should have been done from the get-go, right? None of this stuff made sense of investing in these huge teams in tens and tens of millions of dollars, right? There is also Kensei Capital. I think they're in Japan. They raised a $500 million fund with a similar kind of thesis, right? These five net worth individuals are investing in later stage. They require less upside, less multiples on the actual investments. So,

there's a little bit less information there, but it is kind of looking at equity and project financing. This makes a lot of sense. So, what I'm plotting here is I think it's really really cool to see that they're finding creative ways to invest and support game development rather than the grift that was the big VCs at A16Z and and and Lightspeed and others.
did we just hear a positive from Eric Kress?
Oh. 100% yes. So I applaud what they are are are trying to do. We'll see how successful they can be. We have seen some really good success in terms of publishing in these Indies {slash} double A, you know, with Claire Obscura and others. And so I think they're just trying to replicate that kind of success. And you know, obviously I was talking to Griffin. So
[laughter]
I was it was a little biased, but like they seem to have the people that actually can find the right type of games and the right kind of deals to make this work, but we we shall see.
I wrote a piece on on this, I think like few weeks ago, which was about the VC

math being broken and this is kind of the consequence of it. So overall, just the other thesis is that the game simply doesn't support VC math as it is right now that is built on 10x or higher outcomes. The multiples currently are too low. Most of the acquirers have been acquired. The market growth is pretty much at an inflation level. And as long as the valuation of public companies are so conservative, so will be the valuation of startups. Now, Griffin actually raised one of the biggest individual, if not the biggest individual gaming funds ever. And this is them finding new ways to deploy capital in a market that has vastly changed. They could have gone the Play route, the Bitkraft route, and expanded into consumer tech. They could have gone the A16Z route of pivoting. They you know, they couldn't have gone to the Lightspeed route because that would mean shutting down the entire fund. Uh but kudos to them because they stayed in

gaming and they built an alternative financial vehicles. And I I was listening to an interview of Peter Levin, who's one of the founding partners of Griffin Gaming Partners, on also a guest on the Deconstructor of fun podcast. But anyways, he was with with Game Speed and he said something like this. I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember correctly, but he said if you can't find opportunities in the down market, you shouldn't be investing in the sector. So he essentially threw a little shade on the tourists that that left. So that was that was powerful powerful from from Peter. Anyways, Tim Bender who's leading this publishing function is by all accounts the man to do it. They're starting with milestone financing. I think this is just me kind of like hypothesizing because they have a banker involved here, Nick. I think next is going to be publishing then they will become sort of a straight up indie publisher that's going to IPO this whole thing. And yeah, the bankers built something that can be

sold. I think this is this the the end result of this will be much more profitable than few hit indie games. And I think Griffin is going towards this like I don't know. It just looks like Griffin is going towards this sort of a private equity/investing business getting closer to Haveli type of a actor. And I'm all for it. They have a great team and they are creative in how they deploy capital. So this is this is a good move. I'm very positive about this for the industry and for Griffin as well.
I just I don't even know what to say that we just covered a story positively from everybody.
[laughter]
Good job.
Well, Embracer's next, so
Yeah, let's let's that was a warm up. Let's talk about Embracer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get into [laughter] Well, but I would you know, I I just to wrap that one up, I think I think Hooded Horse has seen a lot of success and so that the CEO kind of helping them from an indie perspective, you know, what I'd

love to see is when you have folks that have experience in the things that they're working on coming in and lending that kind of perspective. I think is super super helpful. All right. So here we go with Embracer.
So um
[laughter]
Embracer made yet another announcement of a restructuring which you know, it's so fatiguing like it's really hard to keep track cuz they're just moving everything around, right? So basically Embracer is splitting into two publicly listed companies. They want us to trade on the Stockholm Exchange.
[laughter]
Oh boy.
What? Stockholm Exchange is biggest in Europe. Like I think so. Stockholm Exchange is a real thing.
The tallest [ __ ]
[laughter]
What are you talking Stockholm Exchange is legit. Phil, come on.
Yeah. Nothing Nothing's gone wrong on the Stockholm Exchange for gaming. All right. But anyway, so they're listing two publicly traded companies in 2027 in some far future like fantasy land. So what what goes where?

Fellowship Entertainment now gets all the prestige IP including Lord of the Rings, Two Mater, Kingdom Come, Deliverance, Metro, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal, and Warhorse. Mobile is staying with the Embracer entity which includes Deca, Crazy Labs, A Thinking Ape, which Embracer terms as mobile games asset care, you know, like an old folks home for mobile gaming. They have like 600 staffs so blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway. So basically they made Coffee Stain a separate listing in 2025 and then they're s- flipping the whole structure cuz originally Embracer was going to rename itself to Fellowship. Now it's a keeping the Embracer name and then spil- spinning Fellowship out instead. So this is the real confusion, right? So rather than Embracer maintaining all these new IPs, they're actually pulling they're putting the IPs in the Fellowship and that's going to be the new publicly traded company with all the premier prestige IP. You know, keeping you know,

these three studios as a care business, you know, like, you know, some like retirement home or whatever. Um It's just like I I don't even know why that company even wants to be public at this point, right? Why don't just sell it off or just keep it as an independent private company? I don't know. Like the shareholder stuff is all a mystery to me. It's not even worth it. But at the end of the day, this is basically just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's [laughter] just like this is There's nothing they can do. You know, I mean, it's [ __ ] over, dude. And I I even even the Fellowship stuff, which I will admit, they have some amazing IP in the Fellowship Entertainment Group. However, I just don't think they have the teams to execute against any of them. None of them. Except maybe Metro. I think that team is still in So, but Crystal Dynamics is evidently a [ __ ] train wreck. Eidos is a train wreck. Tomb Raider is just supposedly the two games that are in development are absolutely horrific. Lord of the Rings, they may be doing an action game at Lord of the Rings, but the, you know, the MMO

was canceled, which I think they were part of. How anybody is still alive after all of this disaster, and particularly Lars, it's just just blows my mind. Anyway, that's all I got.
I actually had to kind of like go chronologically understand all the assets they have divested and sold and and and spun off. Like there was the Asmodee Group that was separated in 2025 and really on. That's one. That was board games. When they bought out as French board game company for billions, billions. Art Games and Cryptic Studios, I don't even remember what those were. They were sold in November 2025 for my schnuts. Coffee Stain and Friends was spun off in late 2025. I believe Coffee Stain is publicly traded company, probably on Danish stock exchange or or Swedish, I don't know.
[laughter]
Their turnover is like I don't know, it's Anyways, Saber Interactive, that was one of their

big ones. That got sold to Beacon Interactive in 2024. In 2024, they also sold Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two. They divested Cypriot company Easybrain to Miniclip. That was their biggest deal, 1.2 billion dollars. And overall, like there were 44 studios that they closed down. 80 projects in development were canceled. And the workforce basically went into half from 15.7 thousand people to 7,900. The tally is like the the acquisition binge that Kress was screaming about between 2019 to 2022 that they have no capabilities of of handling this. That peaked at 130 companies under the umbrella. And then in 2024, the Saudi deal with Savvy collapsed and the fires sale started. And we're still here. They've shed over 50 entities in roughly two years. So, my question is like where does this end? Like what are

we doing here? I don't understand what's going on.
I mean, I I just want to talk about the the branding of this because where it's going is that Embracer is basically saying that brand name is toxic. If they're putting all of the IP in a new brand, which you would think you would want to keep that under your main corporate brand. You know, players typically don't care too much about the studio except for when they do care. If it's a Bethesda, if it's you know, some of these more storied studios. I found it super interesting, Kress, when you said that they're moving everything that's great into another new name, likely to get away from the stain, not a coffee stain, but the Embracer stain.
No, I guess you're totally right like cuz Embracer basically means failure, right? So, like you don't want to put all your best IP into the, you know, definition of failure. So.
Eric, have you ever been to the Swedish airport?
I want [laughter] to know where this is

taking you.
Yes.
So, you go through luggage, right? And you have just a lineup of Swedes who have achieved magnificent things. Like things like Zlatan, Nobel, ABBA members.
Tell me Lars is not on that.
[laughter]
It's like the Hollywood Swedish Walk of Fame.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. So, yeah.
All I'm saying is I'm going to write a petition. You're happy to sign it to have Lars included and have him memorialized for the entire country.
I thought you I thought you were about ready to say that he's actually on the Walk of Fame.
I couldn't keep the troll for that long.
No.
Okay.
Patrick Söderlund's going to go on that wall for
I'm going to graffiti it.
Dude, you see next on stocks? No, what happened? It's all is it tanking?
Yeah, we covered it in Shooter Monthly.
Yeah, they don't have enough content, right? Like was that the big takeaway or what?
Wait till the summer holidays hit. Wait till the summer holidays hit. They won't have a peak until December. Any updates?

[laughter]
So, just to give
Americans context, DICE always ships games in November, right? And so that means you're crunching for gold during the Swedish summer. And so that's an awful alignment. And so DICE offered one and a half salary. So, you would earn 50% extra your monthly wage if you did not go to vacation in July. And by the way, you have a legal protection to take 30 days of continuous vacation in July. Not a single person I talked to took it.
And I just have to say like it's it's the whole country's built around it because the daycare closes, the school closes. So, it's not your choice because like you would have to tell your wife that hey, I'm taking, you know, I'm not actually doing any of our summer activities. I'm not seeing the sun for the entire year because that That the only 30 days that there's sun in that country. And then on top of that, the taxes, like you're not taking 50% more. The taxes that are going to come in, they're going to eat up like 70% of whatever extra 5,000 you would have made. So, it's a bad deal. It's a bad deal. In a socialist country, you don't

throw money.
All right. So, Phil, let's get into some game talk. I think you brought some great data on two different games, Clash of Critters.
Clash of Critters.
Clash of Critters, yeah.
Is this Is this Chinese game? It doesn't sound like it.
[laughter]
Well, I think what we're seeing in general is that the Chinese games are figuring out how to appeal to the Western audiences.
Kind of like Lilith has been struggling. Habby has been struggling.
All right. So, we are checking in on Lilith, my my sweet darling child Lilith. They have a new game out, Clash of Critters. It is going to blow your [ __ ] mind what we're about to experience. It's the fine It's the best of Eastern delicacies. But, before we get there, we need to cover the Lilith Games portfolio scorecard because it is [ __ ] grim.
[laughter]
It is grim. If you remember, they were, you know, big squad RPG. AFK Journey was a huge bet, new narrative elements, 3D

navigation. They were coming off their AFK Arena game, which was doing really well. Remember they had Dislyte, which was kind of um So, basically, all these squad RPGs bombed. They have a 4X portfolio. 4X portfolio they didn't focus on. They took their eye off the ball. It's the only thing keeping them afloat right now. They have Paimon, which is a creature collector 4X entry point. That's actually scaling quite well. Let's see how that does. But, still Rise of Kingdoms is their number one game. Warpath is the World War II one. Call of Dragons is a medieval one. And then the rest portfolios fairly irrelevant. They actually tried to revive Farlight 84. Remember this is the game going after Apex? It's a first-person shooter. Just let it die. Please let it die.
No. No. No. [laughter] No. I it to be extraction shooter next. Let's go.
[laughter]
So here's where the grim news comes into place. If we look at MAU downloads and revenue, January through April run rates year-over-year for the last 4 years, 2023 they were looking at 200 million,

2024 160, 2025 116, 2026 100 million. So they have been in precipitous decline and I'm sorry I don't think revenue that you get from web stores is going to get you somewhere that solves the 70% that AFK Journey is down year-over-year. And if you remember they also do the rent the incentivization where you own dividends. Remember in the games? We're talking about this is a Chinese model. Just want to highlight that. So okay, this is Lilith going in fall from grace, um, paper tiger as you might say. And so then the new game is a combination of pachinko, pachinko core. So if you're looking at the screen right now, we have a screenshot from the game where there's a big push button reminiscent of Monopoly Go and when you push that you basically shoot pinballs into pachinko style reward center where the balls can drop. And then what you'll do is you'll get these candies. These candies level up your account and that's from which everything pretty much springs. You level up your account, your creatures are going to level up. Did you

say creatures, Phil? Yes, that's right. This is a creature collector with a pachinko front end. So right now we're looking at a Plants versus Zombies style grid system where you're attacking and defending, although there's not like any particular elements you need to get really care about here. You're just placing your characters and they're attacking. You basically set it on auto battle and literally you can go outside of the screen. You can minimize the auto battle and you can go back to your pachinko style gambling. You want to level up your account level because it's going to increase the cap of your creatures as well. So the loop is tied together. So hold on tight because we're getting into the gotcha, which is your ability to earn these special gotcha tokens where you drop from a crane and it goes past differing multipliers and those differing multipliers multiply the pinballs and then those funnel down and they basically attack these figurines which are creatures down below. Once a certain number of pinballs has depleted their quote health, then you get the creature.

Once you've collected the set, you move on to the next set. So there's another gambling mechanic on top of it. This is how they do gotcha. They also have very light base builder elements where you are playing like an Ash Ketchum like character. There is some narrative here. The art style is very casual. You have a van. It's reminiscent of Pocket Camp. I don't know if it was like a Berlin company a real long time ago if you remember that. You also have Monopoly Go style revenge targeting or should I say Coin Master. So if [laughter] you remember, you have these targets and yeah, I mean just really just throwing [ __ ] in there. Jen, they have albums. They have
Of course they do.
Start albums. That's one of the collection mechanics. And maybe this is just another UA play. And so this was out earlier this year. They're finally scaling it in the United States. So it's not quite global yet. And wow, I just I think I have great things to say. I think this is exactly what I've wanted since Monopoly Go came around which to me was the casualization of social casino. Let's put on more cores onto

something of that nature and let's see how it goes. I think this is wonderful. This is Legend of Slime meets Monopoly Go in many ways in my view.
The continued casualization of mid-core genres is the way. Like this is what you're seeing and so you've got in a sense like you said the Monopoly Go version, the casualization of idle RPG is what I'm seeing here. I also saw in the you called out Plants vs. Zombies, the lane battle attack that your creatures are on.
So Jen, the Plants vs. Zombies actually does remarkably well on the App Store with organics. Like, that brand has actually subsisted.
Yeah, they're still working on PVZ 3.
But, they can't figure out a model to make make money, you know?
PopCap, so many stories we could tell.
Yeah, don't even get me started. So many stories.
One of the pitches I had back in the day at Kabam was actually taking a Plants vs. Zombies game and making a like upgrade Evo like squad-based something. Like, try to figure out a way of doing

that, but
I see the potential.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
There have been other attempts I was tracking. Like, there's been some hyper-casual attempts. There was one that tried a more I think it was called Manaloot that tried to integrate a more traditional Monopoly Go style board, where this is more of a pachinko core. And I I like the pachinko core core far more. I think it's Monopoly Go's strongest event, too. The gameplay's remarkably simple. I think you're right, by the way. Jen is completely right. I think it's completely right. This is
Idle RPG.
with a real [ __ ] answer on user acquisition. This is a burning light for our squad RPG.
If I had to guess, the reason why this is so successful now is all of these UA mini-games, which is what you know, when you play a mobile game now, it ends up being a collection of mini-games because that's that's what people are playing in UA. Someone told me that their kid said that they were playing an ad and they're like, I want to download and play this game, which was like an ad because ads are playable, right? So, anyway, I what I wanted to just talk about broadly,

too, is it feels like these core meta game systems, whether it be card collection, you know, these PVE PVP mini-games, the pachinko, or the you know, like dig and find the like the gem or whatever it is, streak leaderboards, on and on. These are now table stakes. These are MVP features for almost any game, not even just casual games. I think if you don't have a system and a meta game system that goes around what your core is, you just going to miss out. And so I talked earlier about like picking up Tomb Blast again and I was shocked at how similar it feels to Royal Match and Royal Kingdom in terms of the meta features. In fact, some of the mini games are like everyone rips off everyone else's mini game. Like they Like everyone's got the pachinko kind of thing going as mini game features that this is a bit more of the core feature that you're saying. And so um fun one that I saw in Tomb Blast was actually physics-based mini games. So I think people should kind of check that out. Like it was like a carnival shooter that

you kind of black blast up. So I open this app and I I downloaded it. This is showing up as number one in role-playing on my iOS App Store in the US. So I I think it they're doing something right, Phil, and I think the big trend that I want everyone else to look to look at here is the idea of casualization of mid-core games first with 4X, now with RPG from a Chinese studio. If we aren't watching out, like you know, any Western developer is going to continue to get their ass kicked if they're not picking up on these trends.
When you have the required number of shards to star up one of your creatures, it lights up in your inventory and in one tap from the creature inventory screen, you do the upgrade. So you sit there and you can just rip through these upgrades and it has like this anime style animation. Like to me that's a brilliant stake in the ground for what we're talking about here. Like that's a very casual way to approach this genre.
Mhm.

Yeah. Well, well, first of all, I want to do a call out because this is from Far Light Games. Like that's the publisher. It's Lilith Studio. So I think this is the second game from the Far Light Studios. Looking at Lilith, they've had an interesting path because I remember starting to play really play their games with AFK Arena and it was like the super simplistic take where they entered RPG genre and showed that graphics don't really matter. It's all the core systems and the hooks and the loops and the monetization that truly matters in RPG. And then they made AFK Journey which was like beautiful graphics. It was kind of confusing with like, wait, you told us this and then you went to do anything that everybody else does and that's where where they kind of lost their way. With this one, it has all these elements almost like idle RPG for casual audiences and the cheap graphics the way I read it is it's very easy to push more content and create sort of a modular game where you can just change around what the core is, what are the added mini games, or even new verticals. You guys are talking

about that this is the sort of a way that the Chinese have developed and now they are pushing these core experiences to a more casual audience. But we had this long time ago. We called this advanced casual. I think Angry Birds 2 was the sort of like the first example of how many really core elements you can put into a very casual game that actually helps it to to monetize and engage and retain and kind of adds a lot depth to a very simplistic game. And I feel like the Chinese didn't invent this. They have just perfected what started here and that kind of lost that the advanced casual approach that we had. I don't know, am I totally off here?
No, wait a minute. First of all, Angry Birds didn't do [ __ ]
Angry Birds 2.
Yeah, they improved the monetizations barely. What we're talking about is a completely different thing. We're talking about taking a game that makes zero money and that makes like $20 per download on average. You're talking about Angry Birds which made $1 per download and went to like $4 per download. It's a completely different

scale. No.
No.
And that's why Rovio is in the shits right now and they're [ __ ] getting written off by Sega is because they didn't figure out how to monetize this stuff. Now, I much as much as I love those guys and those people there, no, this is a completely different scale and a completely different thing. Angry Birds 2 has made $630 million in net revenue.
downloads? This is not my stats.
How many downloads?
173 million for
Okay, yeah.
Okay, so that's like
a buck fifty a [ __ ] DOWNLOAD. A BUCK FIFTY A DOWNLOAD. YOU CAN'T [ __ ]
[laughter]
ACQUIRE users at a buck fifty a download. You can't scale that [ __ ] Stop giving false positives on this [ __ ] right? This is the [ __ ] you should be following, not Angry Birds, not Rovio.
I didn't say that. I said that I said that that we had this in a way like we had the first steps where we took a simplistic game like slingshot and added RPG mechanic and it worked and then Chinese took it to the whole different level. Like they didn't invent it. They had the first step. No, wrong. Wrong.

It's a billion dollars in revenue.
Rovio did it wrong. The Chinese have done it right, okay? Period. End of sentence. And Scopely, maybe, okay? So, stop. Stop making false equivalencies. I
can't take it anymore.
Let me jump on the [clears throat] ripping Mishka a new [ __ ] Graphics absolutely matter. Absolutely. And you keep calling them cheap graphics. Like what matters right now is that casualized appealing graphics are allowing you to acquire more players at a lower CPI because they think they're [clears throat] going to engage in a casual game. See above. Everything I've been saying the last couple of months is a lot of players don't want games that feel like really hard for them to do. And so, these like look at King Shot. Look at this game. Look at Whiteout Survival. Like graphics absolutely matter, but not in the way that you think they do.
Yeah.
Get away get the way of monetization. And that's why this whole Roblox thing

makes no sense. Why are you going after HD when 80 or 90% of your audience is on [ __ ] mobile? They could give a [ __ ] about HD. They don't want HD. No one makes money in HD, you know? It's like so stupid.
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Speaking of Monopoly Go and and casualization of I guess social casino, Phil, let's talk about Coin Board Master.
Yes, so Coin Master Board Adventure. If you remember, that is the response from Moon Active after the success of Monopoly Go. They've been trying to figure out, I think, how to scale the product for quite some time. And if you look at the downloads since February, they are clearly scaling the product. The downloads for the game are very similar to Monopoly Go, which is doing around 175,000 to 150,000 downloads. But

when you look at active users, you can tell how much ground that they actually have to cover. Like, they might be sitting at 100 or 2,000 or 3,000 active users to Monopoly Go's 2.5 million. So, there is there is quite some gap, but there is signs of life. Now, the other thing that I think parallels this story is that Monopoly Go, it's hard to tell what's going on with the product, but it doesn't look like it's in the best place, either. It looks like it's itself is declining. So, even if we just look at downloads, it shows a long-run linear decline, even though or I wouldn't say linear, but the curve is starting to diminish in terms of the rate of decline, but it still looks like it's trailing off. And we can compare this across a series of KPIs. So, it's not just downloads. If we look at everything year-over-year, it's not only that 2026 is coming in at the lowest in terms of year-to-date downloads, it's also about the lowest when we think about MAU, and it's also the lowest when we talk about revenue. Yes, that doesn't include web stores, but again, if web store revenue was so

significant, we should see it reflected in downloads because they can bid higher in the auctions. And then the fact that we still don't see that, I think is it's troubling. It's troubling. And the whole social casino genre really depends on Monopoly Go. So if we look at social casino revenue from Sensor Tower in the United States, it had basically linear growth like all App Store things did until 2020. It had a stunt, and then you have some ATT effects that basically have it on the decline after COVID as well. If we subtract Monopoly Go from that curve, there's basically a linear decline in social casino since 2021. Like Monopoly Go has single-handedly moved all metrics. I just can't emphasize this enough. When we talk about Clash of Clans, this is why I'm just shocked more people haven't gone after this. We've talked about Fish for Fortune. It's doing okay, but this was such an incredible revolution for the genre, and the key question now is like what what does social casino do next? What does Monopoly Go do next? I think Scopely is struggling to scale the game.

They have chained offers. They have live ops everywhere. And one of the things Massimo, who was the creative director on the product, mentioned and kind of built a model around, and this is a poor reproduction of some of his ideas, is that live ops cuts through the product in Monopoly Go. You can think about like game design as these layers, similar to a jawbreaker. You know, you have your moment-to-moment, then you have your core progression, then you have your monetization, you have your social, and you kind of have these different layers, right? These different layers that kind of go outwards. And his big revelation is that live ops should cut through all of that. And that's exactly what you see in Monopoly Go. Like they have all these different cores connected. But the thing that I'm left with is like, okay, what is there left to milk out of this product? They launched this stupid [ __ ] chat app, which is just the dumbest thing I've ever I don't know if you guys actually had a chance to use it, but I'm supposed to chat with I guess with Monopoly Go friends. It literally is just a chat window. It just seems like a desperate last attempt for relevancy from an executive who's like yelling and saying, "Give me the money."

And we talked about the brand ads. I don't know. Jen, you like what's what do you do What do you do with this now? What's left?
Yeah, this is the age-old question, right? It's so
Franchise manager.
franchise? Yeah, how do you do long-term franchise management when you I mean, it's not even three, right? Like isn't it almost three later on this summer? So, there's a lot of pressure to maintain KPIs. And I By the way, I felt this on League of Legends and TFT is once you get a player in and they make it past a certain window of time, you know, like on League for us it was like 10 days. If we can keep you for 10 days, then you are a League player for life. I'm generalizing, but that's kind of like the idea. What they're seeing on on Monopoly Go, and I haven't looked lately at their retention numbers, but we know that the retention of this game is once you get in it is like the most addictive thing ever. Like players stay forever. And so, I know that we are super concerned about the decline in downloads. And by the way, Sensor Tower has a new report. I think either Mishka

you'll do a podcast where we can talk a little bit about it next week. They have a Q1 report. You know, this is somewhat also a macro issue. Downloads are flat to down on most platforms. Monetization is you know, in mobile is flat to slightly up. Phil, I always hear you in in my head about inflation. And so, some of it is maybe it's the game, some of it is macro, and some of it is you know, the crack pipe of the collabs doesn't seem to be working as much anymore. Harry Potter did very well for them when I looked at downloads and revenue from the Harry Potter integration. I think they have a Disney one going on right now. It doesn't seem to be moving the needle, but remember when you do these types of events, it allows you to get creative that you can use in UA that hopefully makes yourself more efficient. Those are things I would be looking at. I mean, I don't know, man. Like that that's a like pay me a lot of money to write that plan.
[laughter]
Don't don't give all the way on a podcast.

So, nothing nothing to do with the word game sales, you don't think?
How about advertising? Should we throw out more advertising in it? Maybe that will help.
Yes. I mean, you've heard me talk about brand performance. So, there is highly trackable brand performance capabilities, especially with influencers, that if you can add in and actually I did a podcast, hopefully it'll launch next week. I talked to the influencer lead at Match Masters from Candy Crush and they've been running influencer marketing for 8 years. And he talks a lot about how they've really deepened the integration between influencer marketing and the game. Such that when you give away a link, click here, you open like amazing rewards. You open into like a live ops experience with these deep linking capabilities that are really giving away a lot of value. So, I think there's channels that still have yet to be mined that are not going to ever behave as deterministically like UA performance marketing, but I do think there's a value in exploring other

channels that people haven't done before.
Like a movie.
Okay. You know
No, no movie. I don't
There is a movie coming.
Oh, Monopoly Go Netflix show.
That's
you don't think you don't think Scopely's marketing team isn't going to be all over that?
Wait, wait, there's a Monopoly movie coming?
Oh, heaven help us.
Monopoly movie in talks since like the last 15 years since I've been working on Monopoly.
I bet Kevin Hart is in it, too.
[laughter]
Let's actually map the TV advertising spend and campaigns and see how well that's done to maintain revenue and performance over the years for the Monopoly Go. Like let's actually just map that and see what see what happens.
It is not fair for us to do it without all of the data.
Mid there was a blip and then now it's been straight down since there. So, how many millions was spent then? November 2024.
Are you taking into account the efficiency that they're getting from the

creative that comes from the collabs that they're that they're doing? How they can, you know, decrease CPIs and make things more efficient, they save on other UA production.
I I think that's fair and I also think like talking with Machine Zone ex-Machine Zone people, like there's a reason you do TV ads. It doesn't mean that they're unprofitable. It is like the next best option, even if it's further down the profitability chain. Like you got to be a little bit desperate. You called this out, Eric, to do it. But it doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. Okay, so then what's what's your counter plan, Mr. Kress? All right, what are you going to do to grow Monopoly Go? You tell You tell me then, right? Cuz you can't dunk on marketing because that is your short-term lever. Give me the long run.
These games are leaky buckets, right? And so you really just can't do much and so you have to either build new [ __ ]
that's your answer? What What's just going to explain the decline? Come on. Like, really?
All right, we create other vectors of spend.
[clears throat]
So, yeah, where would the decline be without these activities? If that's your thesis, that all these games are leaky

buckets, then they would have bled out a long time ago and the marketing activities are what's keeping them at a sustained, if not in some cases growing with some good spikes.
I would argue that their live ops Investing more in live ops as opposed to TV advertising is probably a smarter move.
It's one two one dream. What's What's the
I guess when you have a billion dollars I want to be clear here. This game is like a billion-dollar business. This is not rinky-dink. This is not Angry Birds 2, okay? This is like a real game. You know?
I knew it. I knew [laughter] it was going to go there.
I'm just being a smart ass.
And Jen, like the you really start to get inside the head of Dream and all these other match companies where it was like run the sister game. That's your safe lever. Is there a play here? Is there a brand extension here? I mean, Chat up does not count, but is there some sort of other play here that Scopely has in their their playbook?
Like launch another app? I I don't love doing that. I feel like that deters and splits your audience.
You don't think there's a royal kingdom for Monopoly Go?
No.
Yeah, I don't think so. Okay.

No, I think you could do it with a different brand, but I don't
of Life obviously, but putting that aside. Uh
Yeah, I I am sure they have a ton of those in mind of what to do, but you know, the danger when you start launching other apps that live outside of it, you're going to cannibalize your audience. This is why when I was at Zynga and we were on FarmVille and we were looking at like, let's build a feature that, you know, cross promotes all the other vills, right? CityVille or YoVille. Remember all the other vills? And it was like, oh, actually actually we just end up screwing each other because you end up cannibalizing people to other games. Remember we looked at Hoyoverse? Right? Didn't we kind of assume that it looked like some of the games that were cannibalizing each other with ZZZ and Honkai and the other one?
I don't know. I could imagine a greedy exec thinking of Monopoly Go more like Cookie Run Kingdom. Remember we talked about the metaverse that the Koreans are building? You know, like what what does that look like for Monopoly Go? I think you got to you got to think like an imperialist. I think there's more for this to copy. Why

is there decline though? I don't think anyone's answered that question though. Like you're telling me longer retention's great. You're telling me they've done their best on brand. I guess like where does this thing land? Cuz it's it's continuing to decline. I think I just want to emphasize that.
No, I think it's a It's a recurring like billion-dollar business, you
Yeah.
It's a forever game. We don't know web store revenue.
Mhm.
We can make some estimates because of who's at Playtika that announces their web shops. So, what? Between like 20, 30%? We know that Sensor Tower is working on a product for tracking web shops. So, hopefully they'll come back soon with news on that. Can I just do the last one very quick? Although
Tune Us In.
So, in playing Tune Blast, so I'm playing the game very lovely and then I get this pop-up with John Carlo Esposito. I don't think I pronounced it correctly, but the actor that plays Gus Fring from Breaking Bad or if you watch The Boys, he's like the CEO of Vought,

like the villain. So, I got this pop-up to like watch a video. I'm like, "Oh, you would like to take me out of your app to watch a video. Interesting. Okay." Might not have been something I I would have done internally. Usually this is an acquisition tool. So, he's got two different videos that he's in for Tune Blast. And so, again, this you can bring up the the chart from Sensor Tower that I did. So, on the chart, I think it all started on May 11th and Chris, I know that you said you had to squint, but I did see an increase in installs and in revenue. I do agree that all of this all of this has to be tied into live ops events, which is likely what's happening. The other thing I saw is that they cut this ad up. It's all over their UA creative. So, in Sensor Tower, you can do the creative gallery. You can see all of the UA. And so, like I said, then from a results standpoint I just did a pre-post for like the 2 weeks before to

now, it's up 58% in downloads. I think these are things to keep an eye on and Chris, to your point, it is if you are not fully integrating this throughout one team, one dream, throughout the game and the marketing, it's not necessarily going to pay out. But I do think there's some win back opportunities as he from here is to bring back new players who might be doing Oh, one thing I did want to mention kudos to this team because I hadn't I was at I'm at level 8,200. I haven't played in a couple of years. When I came back, the re-onboarding experience was stellar. It was very simple. They You know how there's all the icons on the left and right of the screen with all the 12,000 meta game things that we just talked about. It slowly reintroduced those to me, so I didn't become overwhelmed and didn't have cognitive load issues. So, I mean, excellent excellent thoughtful product UI design, re-onboarding. So,

this was another learning that I had coming back to this is if you are going to do these campaigns to bring people back to the game, make sure that your product is welcoming for the people who are coming back and you don't blow their mind with all the [ __ ] in there.
Yeah. The only thing I want to say here is that look, we we seen from Zynga is they are focused almost 1,000% on the Turkish games, right? They're spending money, they're investing in these money. This is game of late in cycle, you know, TV advertising is like probably the only option to spend I don't even want to say profitably, but to spend your money, right? But again, I had to squint to figure this out. If you look at worldwide, you can't see any real difference between this, but if you look at the US, you can see the downloads are up, but the actual revenue is down year-over-year for the for the you know, 2 weeks prior, 2 weeks forward. So, you're right, the ads look amazing. I love that actor. A little bit disappointing in the ending of that that show, frankly, but
[laughter]
it still was good.
How does this campaign do compared to the Tune Blast Ryan Reynolds campaign?

Because like we're talking about triple-A tier actor versus a really solid B-tier actor in this case.
Who is B-tier? You think Gus Fring, Giancarlo Esposito is B-level?
saying that his talent as an actor, but if we're talking about like pricing-wise or fame-wise, like we can't even remember the the person's name and then we have like a Ryan Reynolds that is, you know, Deadpool and all these movies and [ __ ] Netflix shows and
I'll give him that. He's He's definitely a rung below Ryan Reynolds.
Yeah, you can't like the one is in TV shows, the one is in blockbuster movies. It's not an offense. It's just say like it's fact.
What what I will say is whenever I do celebrity integrations, you have to figure out and usually you do some consumer insights to find which of these celebrities appeals most to your specific audience. So, I don't care if somebody is A-tier or B-tier in your mind or in my mind, what I care about is who the audience wants. So, back in FarmVille, that's why we did this

massive survey, Kate Hudson was the one. And so, that's why we went out and did an integration with Kate Hudson because that's who our audience wanted. And I would never would have been like Kate Hudson like for farming game, but that's what they wanted. But, I think that's important if you do do these kinds of integrations, you have to make sure it is aligned with your audience. All right, everyone, thanks and we will see you next week.
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