TWIG #403: The Market Only Grew 2%, Friendslop Hits the PC Charts and China Drafts Off GTA VI

Hello everyone and welcome to Deconstructor Fun. This week in games number 403. I'm Jen Dano. I fill the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. Today we have
aircraft strategy and investing.
Ethan Levy, Duke of Design, Grandmaster of Gotcha. I'm here. [clears throat]
Mishkatov, Kalispera, friend of the founders.
Here we got episode what? [laughter] before my internet gives out like a walls of Troy. He's under siege already.
All right, here's what we got on the episode today. Where the growth is going. We're going to break down some new new Zoo news. Of course, I write this for myself and I can't say it. The top PC revenue games in the west have three new games on the list and they are a little bit surprising. So, we're going to talk about that. We haven't seen the last of Last of Us games. Chinese mobile game companies are looking to draft off of GTA 6's lead.

So, first, Ethan, welcome back. It's been a while. How you doing?
Oh, you know, like uh like many in our community, I have been hit with the industry contraction. I hit my second studio closure or team closure in 9 months just this summer. And, you know, out here looking for full-time work and doing freelance work like many of our listeners are, I'm sure. So, you know, I'm a bellweather of the games industry right now.
You're your representative. Call Amir Satbot the saint of the industry. Maybe his website can give you some leads. All right, so let's shill some things coming up in a couple of weeks. Deconstructor Fund roundt. I'm hosting that. Crest is coming. That's at Zinga's headquarters in San Monteo on October 19th. We're going to do a twig live. Scotty K uh Scott Cronisburg Zingga seat chief product officer has asked to be on the panel sitting next to Crest. So I can't even wait for that to happen. Yeah,

we're going to do a little Gen Alpha talk, a little UA creative roundts, get to know folks. We are almost full and the lineup is just fantastic. People from all the platforms from the major companies, pretty senior folks coming. Thanks to Appcharge for sponsoring us. Zing is hosting us and Uptake is also sponsoring. So Mishka, you also have some events coming up.
Yep. Paddle is going to be played at the end of the next month and then next October. I don't remember the dates. There's going to be paddle. There's going to be our typical supper club and then we're going to do two of those as well. So paddle and supper club in Tel Aviv during the Israeli mobile gaming summit. I think that's what it's called. So we're doing a little side event there backtoback since those Limol and Tel Aviv are very close to each other to sign up to all these events both the roundts at Zingga's HQ the Limol paddle the Tel Aviv supper club go to deconstructorfund.com

there's a sign up to the newsletter we send newsletters twice a week all the links to these events and all the upcoming events will be there so that is a newsletter worth a dinner or a game of paddle so Definitely definitely do that all for free.
You interviewed Mark Pinkis who is the former founder and CEO of Zinga. You and I both worked at Zingga. I got to be in lots of meetings with Mr. Pinkis, especially on Farmville. I thought it was really interesting. He's got a book out and he had some news like a news broke from this. I was so you scooped
Mishka. Congrats. Like your series on all of these founders has been crushing it, dude. I truly enjoy these and I enjoy talking to Pinkis. He is by all accounts. I mean, if you've listened to the podcast, my start is he's a superfounder in all the good and all the challenging as you would you would assume with anybody who is a superfounder. So, not Omi Zingga, but we got IPOs support.com. Before that, he

built a company and sold it. He's been seed investor at Facebook and Twitter. That's insane. and he runs a product management course in Stanford and he came on the podcast to basically you know sell the his latest book life at the speed of play. I think it's his first book and the book is about product management. It's sort of like a bible on building products people can't live without. And naturally I think he was in that you know I'm going to promote my book mode for the first 10 to 15 minutes and then we went full pinkus which is in my opinion awesome. That episode got got picked up by mobile gamer Biz. So, shout out to Neil because Pinkis mentioned in the podcast that he had a handshake deal with Il Capan, CEO and co-founder of Supercell back back back in the days when heyday had just launched and Clash of Clans was scaling and that deal was for $400 million which is chunk of change because 51% of the company was sold to Soft Bank in about a year from that point for $3 billion valuation.

Anyways, whether that story is true or not, I think we will have more news on it because it covered so much that board [clears throat] members of Supercell have reached out to me with another perspective of what actually happened. [laughter] So, I didn't press on it because it it didn't really have anything to do with the podcast itself. But overall, if you listen to this podcast, I I saw some LinkedIn posts where people were like, I'm listening to this with pen and paper cuz the quotes were insane. Like when he was talking about this particular incident where he had an offer to Supercell, he brought it to the board and board was like, "Listen, we tried to digest OMG Pop and draw something and that was like $200 million down the drain. We're not going to do it." And Pinkis was able to fire them, but he didn't because that would have he would have been getting sued personally. And his quote was, "Elon would have done it. Elon has much bigger balls than I have. I wish I had more conviction. I wish I had bigger balls. I think I do today. I wish I had more confidence as a founder and CEO to go

against the grain and fire mying board for being idiots and I didn't want to fight them or Wall Street and I went along with it to the detriment of everybody. So check it out. Really good podcast.
All right, nice work. Corrections.
This is actually regarding the newsletter. So on deconstructive fun newsletter, the one where you can sign up to all the events. I wrote a little bit about Kjima since that was a conversation on our last twig and his departure from Sony to Xbox and I made the point that by the time Vice it comes out it will be a decade since Kjima shipped and how important it is to continue shipping and evolving through that. That was a mistake because Death Stranding 2 had shipped last year in 2025. And I remember that wasn't even AI. I remember seeing it and somehow I'm like, "No way. This guy was working on three AAA games at the same time." He probably had nothing to do with this trending too. It was like somebody else did it. But of course he did. So he shipped literally last year and he has been shipping consecutively consistently

between four to 5 years between the games. Albby, I do have to say that Death Stranding one did 19 million units sold and Death Stranding 2 did 2.5 no 1.9 million units. 1.9 Death Stranding 2.
Yes, Death Stranding one.
1.9.
It's the den through 19 million.
Yeah. I was like 19 million would have been the biggest game ever and I didn't play it and I was like when did I like was this Hogworth the Hogwarts whatever and then it
Yeah. Go.
The accuracy of the statement is that Cojima has not released a successful game in the last 10 years. Right. So the last Metal Gear Solid was almost 10 years ago. 2015. That was the last game that was actually likely profitable and successful. And so
you can put that as a as a as a correction, right? But these Death Stranding games are disasters.
Oh, okay. My bad.
They're media darlings, but they never perform well.
Well, in that sense, my bad. [music]

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Should we talk about the fun stuff in the market? How well [laughter]
I don't know if this is if this is fun or not, but Ronin Patrick's does a Substack and he is actually an analyst at Nuzu, so he has a lot of access to data. And so we're going to go through

his substack that has like a thesis of seven key points. So we're going to go through most of them. Nuzu is pegging 2026 games at 214 billion. And Ronin says that still 13% below 2021 after inflation. So the first thing that I wanted to bring up is please stop comparing to CO. anything compared to 2021 is just like like the world was in a very very different place and I know that you know it happened and it's there but I just want to discount that point. I think last year was our biggest year and now the challenge when we see these we're looking at a chart if you're watching us on YouTube or Spotify video is that 2025 was the biggest year in the industry but this is nominal. does not account for inflation if you hear Phil in your head asking that. So that's point one. Crest, I think you are going to take us through most of the other points.
Yeah. So, first of all, Ronin is kind of

like doing God's work right now because he's actually looking at data and doing analysis and being very pragmatic about it as opposed to fleecing and pitching and doing the grift like some of the other analysts that are out there which I won't name at the at the top of the thing. So I think what he's doing is really good in terms of understanding what's going on in the market. And I wish I wish New Zoo would push and support his analysis more just in general because I think they see tend to be publishing only the positive pieces and not the ones that are a little bit more analytical. All right. So the second point that he makes is growth is coming from mature markets, not new players. So this is one thing that I've been trying to hammer home for a long period of time. If you're trying to build games for subsaharan Africa or India or South America, just stop, okay? [laughter] Because those markets are not growing. 71% of the $225 growth came

from the West and came from China, right? Which is North America and Europe and China, right? The average North American spender spends $335 versus $36 for MEA, Middle Eastern Africa, over 9 times the revenue. So that is where all the money is, right? So emerging markets are posting high percentage growth on a very very small base, but they are not the driver of this industry. The real driver is really existing players in the west that are spending more money is ultimately what is happening.
Well, this is the point I want to double click on because as I work with a lot of different folks, I think it is a mindset change that we all have to get used to. In some cases, leaders, you know, think that growth is new players, new players, UA, go get me new people, and that's the equation that comes out in their mind. But I think we're finally seeing the data coming through that's like, okay,

the growth needs to come from your current, your elapsed players. How are you developing systems inside of your game to keep your existing people happy? Don't let them fall through a leaky bucket. Like, let's keep them. And the value of keeping them is so important right now. I think one of the things he talked about later on is that UA for their numbers was up 30% cost per install was up 30% in 2025. I think the number is something like 20% from apps. This year UA's on just just going off the chain on how expensive I' I've heard some rumors that the Chinese market to get a 4X player it's $200 to get somebody in forex right now from the CPI stamp. I wouldn't call this new, just its importance has increased exponentially as the market has matured because my direct experience on mobile free-to-play teams is that as your live ops game manages its life cycle, there's long been a focus on not only keeping payers engaged from soft launch through

years of live ops, but also as you get into your product's life, uh, running re-engagement campaigns and being creative about how you reactivate laps players and laps spenders. And it's also just a natural part of a game's growth, right? The longer you're in market, the higher your CPIs are, assuming that you start off with a game that you can have profitable CPIs at the beginning. That's that's a really big challenge right now. But CPIs will always grow over time and especially as you're talking about a game that's in the market years and years. Like I'm still seeing ads recently on Star Wars Galaxies of Heroes. like the CPI and payback window on that game this many years after launch must be just astronomical. And if I'm seeing that ad, you know, it's probably the targeting on that is more likely a lapse player re-engagement than it is a new player re-engagement. But this has been a long part of the landscape and it's just as we mature more and more important.
Okay, I want to add one more thing before I have to listen to Mishka Kakov talk about [laughter] econ. Okay.

No, no, no. Let me let me just just so I can go pee or something because I just can't handle it. [laughter] All right. But all right. What I really want to what to bring home here is that this is customer demand. This is not a supply problem. This is a customer problem. The customer wants to play the same things over and over and over again. Like this is what they demand both for mobile and console. We are seeing the data. It is suggesting the exact same thing. They are driving themselves towards these games, these iterative type games. And people keep saying that people want customer wants innovation. I don't think they want innovation. I just don't think people are trying anything new really out there, right? They're all playing the same games over and over and over again. And we'll continue to get drive that point home
in the world. Just all new fails. That was his quote. Anyways, uh so fun fact, Ronan was supposed to come on a podcast. I had all these like I've read through the report. I have all the questions and when I sent the questions to Nuzu, they

were like, "Eh, maybe next report." So, uh, [laughter] so yeah. Um, I had some tough questions. Okay. So, Jen, firstly, I agree 100% with you. Every time we use 2021 as a meter for anything, it's bananas. Like, it doesn't make any sense. Even the graph shows like this is anomaly. And then since then, we've been growing. So, it's just it's just it's stupid. Anyways, secondly, according to this news report, spenders grew 5% and average revenue per paying user grew 1.5% which means that roughly three quarters of 2026 growth is more paying people, not per se deeper wallets. That's how I interpret it. Crest, would you agree?
Okay, I I tell me why not. because you're using a blended number of worldwide. You're not isolating North America and Europe. So if we have more spenders in let's say subsaharan Africa then that number is included in that and

they're spending bupkas actually focused on what is driving revenue
which you're driving revenue dropping some giddish today. I love it. No
mazel. [laughter]
Anyways, go ahead. [laughter]
Three Jews in a Goyam. I love it. Yeah.
Okay. [laughter]
That's it.
All right. Once these kids get over this,
I'll see you guys again in 9 months. Goodbye.
So, so the part that that um that pressed some buttons. So, again, I was looking at this. So I was analyzing with my friend AI and then if the market compounds at 3%. 5% in this report half of the growth of the headline is due to dollar weakening. So basically inflation. So the cumulative inflation I was just looking at this is 19% over the last 5 years. That's actually pretty insane. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that the market was expected to add 70 billions nominally from 178 to 243.

And if it would be measured by the constant dollar, so basically uh inflation denominated, that would have been $33 billion increase. And so what I'm trying to say is that the inflation essentially grew the market was responsible for the market growth in this graph for 50% of the growth. And then you can go into nitty-g gritties is like if the half of the revenue according to this chart is coming from Asia, then that is converted to the US dollars and then the US dollar inflation, but they didn't pay in the dollar. So all I'm trying to say is the market has been compounding and growing annually by 2% in real terms. And I think that's the real value and not the six or the five that that is being portrayed. Chris, would you disagree with this?
I disagree with a few of the calculations, but if the conclusion is based upon inflation that we've grown about 2% a year since 2015,
I realize it every month as I pay my credit card bill.
I I did not know that. That's crazy. Anyway, let's talk about China. That

that should be fun.
Yeah.
Right.
The third point was that China is funding its push into the west but is protected in the home market. Something we've been talking about a lot. Right. So the Chinese market is closed to Western publishers. But the PC market though is uncontested because of the bootleg steam on there. Right. So the gray market steam is still there and that gives Western publishers actually an an inlet for PC. But they are completely eliminated from the mobile market. But in North America and Europe, as we've talked about before, the share rose from 19% to 37% from 2019 to 2025. And America shares went from 11% to 27%. So they're kicking our ass in our own market, but we can't compete at all in mobile in their market.
And the structural differences here are pretty crazy. So again, I'm might be criticizing, but let me be clear. I'm criticizing our governments more than than China because best companies I ever worked were Chinese anyways in terms of game development. So Chinese developers have 50% larger target addressable

market than any western developer because they can ship in their home market. I know it's very difficult. I know it's very concentrated. So are ours but still they have 50% more payers essentially than we do. Their tools are equally as good and maybe even cheaper. Like even if we compare the the AI tools like Kimmy API is roughly 50% cheaper than open AAI's flagship pricing and also they are not having a moral crisis when it comes to AI tooling. I'm mentioning AI tooling because that's the the latest of the tooling, but they have access to unities, the FX and Unreal engines and so forth. They have better access to talent than Western developers because just more headcount, more people talking the same language, etc. Their talent is cheaper than in the US by far. And I would say it's on par in terms of salaries to Europe. So meaning that if you hire somebody from Shanghai, that would be probably London pricing. But if you hire somebody from Changdu, that's closer to Bookucharest pricing. So in that sense the price parity is there. And then the last one is I saw this

article somewhere. It was the manufacturing cost comparison. This is automobile industry and it's comparing Volkswagen's production in Germany versus Volkswagen production somewhere in China. And this kind of shows the numbers. This is of course manufacturing. It's different than tech. It's different than gaming. But it gives comparatively some numbers. So the average factory cost per car in Germany it it comes at about 5,000 and in China it's 1,000. Then manufacturing labor cost like it's much lower in China it's 12 versus Germany 62. But the really interesting part comes from productivity where Chinese factories are able to make 51 vehicles per worker versus in Germany 29. And the average sick leave rate, this is actually what the German chancellor referred to in his speech, which I understand you don't watch as Americans, but average sick leave rate was 10% in Germany compared to 1% in China.
Why are we bringing up this car [ __ ] And why are we talking about AI?

AI is important because every developer I know is using it. But there's something I have to kind of correct here, which is that the Chinese openweight models like Kimmy K3 and DeepSeek are not geolock to China. Like at an enterprise level, if you're using Amazon Bedrock, for example, to spin up local secure models, you can set up Astra, Opus, Kimmy K3, DeepSeek, and a bunch of others and route them per task as you need to. So they a company would not have an advantage unless they were one of the frontier companies developing these models meaning their internal pooling was 9 18 months ahead of what they
you see that happening often or do you see companies just choosing because with the companies that I work with they tend to use just the American version. I've never really worked with anybody who would use Chinese AIs.
I don't know enough have a broad enough view to know. Um, I just know that a lot of people are like they're Amazon makes it relatively seamless to do at an

enterprise level for example. And I do know that as people are hitting individual engineers getting a $9,000 $10,000 bill a month bill, right? Their token cost doubling their actual headcount cost. I think people will be looking much more at how they're routing their models.
They have more effective AI tooling. Everything you guys are saying is 1,000% true, but I don't know what the this has to do with Ronin's piece on gaming, right? So, let's move on. Mobile. So, mobile revenue is decoupling from installs. Another thing that we've been tracking for quite a while, right? So, first half downloads in 2026 fell 25%. CPI is up 30%. Paid to organic ratio rose to 61%. So basically paid is a big high much higher percentage of the overall mix than organics. Now mobile is still growing at 10% and 6.8% forecast for 2026. But all that is being driven by existing games and not new games is the kind of

the whole point or the majority of it is being driven by old games and not new games.
Grow what you got. Yeah. This is this is GPI really are the chokeold. Like as long as I know they have been growing not as long as I know but during the last few years they have definitely been growing double digits every year. I think one of the element that has been increasing the CPIs has been the avalanche of different apps coming in the uh the open AI apps and and sorry AI apps and so forth. When I was looking at the numbers of how many new apps are being released on app store so currently it's about 10,000 submissions an hour or thousand submissions an hour. Anyways, a lot I think just the the CPI price will continue to rise and even accelerate because there's so many new apps being launched that are vibe coded and they need marketing because there's no organic traffic and that will all contribute to the rise of CPIs that that we're seeing. So you don't you don't

think so?
No,
I'm seeing them right now in as new games are being launched. I'm seeing the CPI
increase. No, no, no. What's driving up CPIs is the Chinese companies, Scopi, even Zingga with their Turkish games. All the Turkish guys areing spending gajillions of dollars driving their games, which is driving up CPI. It has nothing to do with this chachki [ __ ] that they don't even have budget to [ __ ] spend on UA, right? So, it's like the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that are being pumped into AppLin to push all these games. That's what's driving up CPI and and getting everyone out of the market.
Gambling apps.
You can't compete with that.
And gambling. Yes. Other apps as well. 100%.
Absolutely.
You know, we talked about this last week. Apploving is going out to brands, e-commerce, and trying to get more diversification in. I'm starting to see diversified ads inside of the games that I'm playing. And it's like, whoa, for the first time it's not just somebody else's games. And so all of these factors, big spending from the big

folks, you know, when we get to the end of this, the big are consolidating, the big are getting bigger is is the gist of this entire piece.
This is why this vibe coded slop is not going to actually do anything to the market, right? It's just going to die on the vine. they're just not going to get any traction because they just can't get the attention.
You know, whether you're an LLM or that is like super funded or whether you areing gambling app that is just poison for the uh for the uhing humankind and they know that they're going to be banned like a tobacco anytime soon. So, they're probably spending insane amount of money just to get as many players or as many users as they can before they're banned. I mean, I've talked to these guys a little bit before, but I think they're just trying to capture as much market share as fast as possible because they know that that will be super valuable if they don't get banned. Like, they're not anticipating getting banned.
They're anticipating that there's a winner take all scenario. And so, that's why they're spending likely very unprofitably in terms of not only the UA, but also the the incentives to

gamble, like to give them free currency to gamble. So, anyway,
let's talk about more like what we just talked about. the growth is extremely concentrated into five companies.
Yeah. So what his analysis was basically showing is that five companies effectively are all the growth in the industry. So 10 cent, Century, Pokemon Company, Roblox and Croup, you know, Gina, Freef Fire. They added about $10 billion in 2025, which was basically all the growth.
Tencent alone is 6.2 billion of that growth. What I don't like about this analysis is it adds in China. Yeah. I wish it was just western focused more, but I I brought that up to him. But he has I think he has to do worldwide.
Yeah. Because Garina is is shows the Southeast Asia market, which they own pretty much.
And then Century in part specifically, and they're making a lot of the Forex games out there. Wild Survival and Kingshot. Their mobile revenue was up 99% in 2025, dude. They're just [ __ ] crushing with just two games, right? and

and they're almost single-handedly driving UA costs really super high for for um
they do have the merch as well. They're doing pretty well.
They haven't hit the like
50 million a month, you know, just could change.
This is part of what's been interesting and kind of scary about having basically stepped outside of mobile for a couple years to do UGC and then coming back is that the games are the same, right? Like the games on the top grossing charts are pretty much the same as when I stepped out. And I'm not seeing any massive innovation other than Monopoly Go. I can't point to a major North American breakthrough success that I know of. And it's and like it's reflected in the clients I'm working with. I'm working with much more niche apps going after smaller opportunities than anybody trying to be the next chart topping mobile freetoplay game. It feels like such a mature and conquered market that at least with North American mobile dev costs, it

feels very hard to try and compete for the top and instead you're kind of competing for the niche.
The only one thing I would say that is that is different since you left and coming back is the rise of merge to potentially challenging match three. It's not new and innovative. I think the way that they're crafting the rise is through the metag game systems is is the interesting point.
There were merge games when I stopped working on mobile, I think,
but they're in the top now. Like Gossip Harbor,
the Gossip Harbor Supremacy. Yeah. It's not that there's no innovation at the top. It's that like when Dragon Ball Dokan Battle is like still up there. It's like god this the same. It's almost the same mobile industry from like eight years ago.
It's musical chairs which is everyone just shifts seats every month of like who's who's number one. to that point. All right, Chris, what's number six?
The final point is big publishers are retreating to core franchises and then buying new ones. So, his estimate was that dev costs have rised roughly 10 times per decade. Obviously, much faster

than revenue. On PC and console, there's a retention trap. You can't really validate retention before launch and and you really just get one shot at it. Capcom, 90% of unit sales were back catalog. I don't think Capcom has come out with a new game. They have the Resident Evil Reququum was a big hit this year.
No, that's not a new game. This is This is my point.
An existing franchise.
No, no, I'm sorry. A new franchise.
We covered this a couple weeks ago where we brought up this I think we were the ones that brought up this point that their back catalog was crushing it.
He says Xbox is concentrating spend on Forza, Halo, and Gears. Take Coos obviously sold the private division focusing on the big games. And then he reiterated his stat. 93% of console spend goes to titles that already existed. Right. So every year for the last few years, it is like the gross majority 90 93 to 95% of the market is dominated by existing IPs, not new new games that are coming out. And so what publishers have been doing is they're concentrating on big franchises and that

is taking the majority of the share out there. And then on PC, and people kind of refer to PC as such a great opportunity, is that there are 20,000 games shipped on PC on Steam and only about 300 make over a million dollars.
1.5%.
It's insane, you know. So, this is a winner take all market and most of the winners are really the big publishers. I think we're in a very very mature market in the West and in China. And so if I were to give advice to people and I do this all the time is that like this is when working at the big publishers makes a lot of sense, right? Like going out on your own is really really going to be tough in a market like this until we see new platforms or new opportunities, new AI platforms or something. If you want to build games, going to the big publishers will make sense. Or if you want to have an indie like a lifestyle type business, you know, build for Roblox, build for Steam, that sort of thing. But don't expect a lot of upside from that particular thing. So that's

kind of the state of the state that we're in right now.
Are we in like in in the sense of like only blockbusters from big studios and then the sort of a surprise hits come from either you know tiny studios or just in a different channels like YouTube and and you know streamers and that that kind of stuff.
Basically kind of
our production model is getting there as well. It's just like teams move around and nobody keeps like a big big in-house team. Everything is outsourced and everything is built for occasion. Well, I'll be damned.
So, why don't we talk about some of those surprising new hits?
The mice nuts of the month.
All right. So, let's talk about uh the month of August, which you know, kids are going back to school. It's probably between April and August, you know, some of the the the quieter times in the game industry, but NewU put out a list of their PC and console games by revenue and MAU for the month of August. For Western markets, I pulled the PC one.

And a few things I wanted to touch on for the PC game is there are three new games on the top 10 chart. So unlike what we just said, this is one of the months where it's like, oh, like something we don't often see. So, at number three is a game called Big Walk. Star Wars Zero Company came in at number six. I think they're around a millionish units in what they've sold. And then at number nine is How to Fish. And so, when I saw this list, I was like, what the hell is Big Walk and How to Fish? They look like Friendlop Roblox games as top revenue games against the likes of, you know, Fortnite's [clears throat] number one, Valerant on the list, Counter-Strike, Apex, you know, the usual suspects are all on the list as they are every month. So, the commonality is that these games have the social nature and voice chat. So, I just clicked in. I was looking at Big Walk. It's very similar to the idea of Peak. If you've ever played that other friend slop game, it's a game about walking and talking. You and a bunch of friends walk around, explore, do team challenges,

hang out. It's very cozy almost, and it's for 20 bucks. Now, how to fish is hanging out with your friends while you're trying to figure out silly ways to kill fish and be goofy and sniper things and do really goofy stuff. A little bit more male targeted, but still kind of like I don't know like like a like a adult Roblox game on PC is what I was thinking. So, the important takeaway for folks making PC and PC console games is that relying on the social aspect is now translating to revenue. Albeit that revenue is likely small. This is not like, hey, easy, go [laughter] make one of these games. But if you're like a smaller company and you can control your cost, then like, you know, maybe this can you can make this happen. So, when I was doing the EA Hasbro business back in the day, this was what we were trying to do on the Wii. You would, you know, think of a board game. You sit around the coffee table and you're playing with your family and having a great social experience. We

were trying to gather people around the living room couch and have that experience there. we just couldn't. Multiplayer didn't exist. Uh, you know, voice chat didn't exist back then. So, I'm a little jealous that this is finally the time where this kind of experience is is coming to life. And I have a lot of friends that on Friday night like with their kids, you know, those of us that are older that have like, you know, teenage kids, the way that they bond instead of going to the movies is pulling up a friend game of the week and and having a social experience. So I I love that you know this is this is happening. So um Crest, can I finally convince you that there is like a little bit of worth in all of these social features? Maybe like you know what you were just saying. You just said, "Hey, maybe you go make a a game in Roblox or you go make a friend slop game." Is that some advice that you uh you come back? I will capitulate that if you want to build a lifestyle business, perhaps these games make some sense. But again,

I don't like this type of news piece where they're making some kind of big trend on one month of data, right? Particularly August. My biggest pet peeve on the planet is April and August. April and August are the absolute worst months of the year for gaming. And it's like building any type of trend or based upon like rankings or whatever makes no sense, right? So, you really need to do fullyear analysis that includes the holiday to really get a picture of actually what's going on or at least the trailing 12 month analysis year-over-year would be better.
Just to defend them, they didn't pull out that insight. I did. And I will tell you that last year when you do look at the full year, games like Peak or Lethal Company have been in the top 10 revenue charts. there's usually like one Friend slop game that kind of breaks into the top charts for the entire year. So, I I just think it's interesting we're seeing more of these break through and have success outside of Roblox, which is kind

of interesting.
So, I I don't think it's fair to think of these as only grownup Roblox games. There are a couple of different trends that all come together, and it's hard to say that uh Friendlop is a genre originated in Roblox. There are certainly some precursors to it, but you would also say like Fasmophobia and Among Us are games that birthe this friendlop industry where it's groups of friends, proximity chat, really great for content creation, really great for Discord groups and low cost. It all like bundles together to say this is, you know, as you said, Jen, like the weekend game, whereas, you know, in my youth, we would go to Blockbuster and and rent a movie. Instead, this is like the equivalent. Hey, me and my buddies on Discord. We saw this thing on Tik Tok. It's really funny. It looks fun and chaotic. It looks great to jump into. Let's play repo. Let's play RV there yet. So, yeah, on unlike how to fish, this one one uh if you didn't check out

any of the marketing uh or images, there's a lot more guns and uh sniper rifles in How to Fish.
Um it's it's a really goofy game. And like I said, this is very much at $799 a weekend activity game. It's in that space with, as I said, Phasmophobia, Repo, Chain Together, Lethal Company, Peak, are we there yet? Like, there's a lot of examples of this genre. And if you're looking for smaller scale opportunities to go after games, you got to get out, get marketed, really go viral in a month, and if you win the weekend, you can make a lot of money. Big Walk. There's something really interesting there in that like the Breakout success of Fall Guys. Fall Guys, this game was released day one as a free game on PS+ as a multiplayer only game. Now, this tactic hasn't always worked. There have been a number of day one PS+ free releases that you don't remember or haven't heard of. But for both Fall Guys and Big Walk, that was a big, you know, that creates the momentum along with this is from the people who

did Untitled Goose Games that have a pre-existing audience. They're not coming completely out of nowhere, but a good push plus a chunk of change from PlayStation that seeds the market and allows for this kind of big sales success on another platform at the same time. It's fascinating how not actually it's not because as Chris was saying like everything that we're seeing that hits the market really well has either been in the market for a long time or is a remake or continuation of the existing franchise. What we're seeing is the games that break through on Steam are totally different what what existed there. The fundamental problem with this stuff is that yes, they're breaking through quote unquote, but they're not generating revenue or significant amount of revenue. Like this is the problem, right? So
they are for the people who made them. Not everybody works at EA. [laughter]
Thousands of people got laid off for Microsoft. You know, they can't just find new corporate jobs. They have to if they want to make games.
I doubt that those are the people who are making these new innovative games

after like a decade in a corporation.
Yeah. What I'm trying to say is that like getting these type of breakout hits is so hard and so rare and even when you do, you don't make significant amounts of money. It's like if you again, we just said 20,000 games come out.
These are tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yeah. Only 300 games make over a million dollars out of 20,000 games. It's just the opportunity is not as big as people are suggesting by throwing out this analysis that says that the top games in August are these chachki games, right? That doesn't help people because you're driving people to do things that
are almost impossible like winning the lottery type thing. So, I think what I'm trying to do by bringing this up is identifying a trend in consumer behavior and player behavior that if you are going to be one of these types of people or if you're even, you know, making

games for multiplayer, what is it about these games that is working? And and we talked about it. It's proximity chat. It is the social interaction. It's making content that is clip clippable and sharable on social media for organic pickup. Maybe it's even taking some money from PlayStation and putting it on a subscription platform if you're, you know, more on the desperate side. Uh, I think that limits the upside that you might have on on your game making revenue. But so I mean, Chris, I get it. You're But we, you know, the audience isn't just people who make 300 million dollar hits. Like I, you know, what is it? How can we help those people do things with like what is the feature set that makes sense? And then if you are a little bit of a smaller person, like what is it that we're seeing that drives success?
Yeah, I think this is the thing. I know some of these studio, some of these indie studios that have made considerable amount of money that they wouldn't have gotten at their day job or I mean they weren't having a day job

before that. They're indie developers and they would pocket like two three of them would pocket $10 million which is great but as Chris said that is incredibly rare and it happens to only very very few of them and you know the winners here are probably the the indie publishers but anyways I wanted to to ask Ethan a question because when I was looking at these graph like Steam sales for example in the last 10 years we were seeing 6x of revenue coming in from indie hits and we're seeing the median revenue venue of a of an indie game increasing by four-fold. Again, they're small numbers going from 0.8 to 3.4. But when you guys were talking when Nathan, you were talking and Jen as well about these sort of friend slop games. Are we seeing any kind of a trend where Roblox audience is to some extent maturing or expanding to Steam games and that's why these sort of a friendlop games are doing well because quintessential friends games are Roblox titles if I'm correct. Right. The roots of Friendlop

come from multiple places, not just Roblox, right? Among Us, which was a a massive hit as a game perfect for Discord groups, perfect for streaming, perfect for content creation, right? Phasmophobia also. So like it it it comes from both places at once. But to your point, I think we have one factor is an audience raised on Roblox and Minecraft who are still playing those games and playing other games as well. You have a second factor which is discord becoming the primary hangout place for a generation, right? Like it exists almost as a physical space and gaming is a thing you do together. And so Discord groups and things that entertain groups of people who collect generally on discord is is a major mover of culture. And then as I said the third one is content creation. Right? these Friendlop games, what's so powerful about them is that they inherently make

great content for Tik Tok and Twitch. And so it's like very easy for something to blow up over the weekend and suddenly RV there yet feels like the game everybody's talking about this weekend.
And these games are inherently content creation machines in a way that Marvel's Wolverine just isn't, right? like my clips and your clips in Wolverine look almost the same. And so that's why it takes millions and millions of dollars of marketing to get mine share and this giant license for Wolverine. Whereas like you know the right game goes viral on Tik Tok and it's millions of dollars in the pocket.
Here's like the one other benefit of these silly social games that have jump scares or they have horror. That's why Fasmophobia took off because there's nothing funnier than laughing at somebody who just got scared. I don't know what it is in human nature that allows us to do that. But so many of these games can organically market their game because the game itself is the

product and clipping the experience and putting it on social. Players do that organically. You don't have to pay them. You don't have to incentivize them. Next thing you know, everyone is organically coming to your game. And so you've not spent any money to market this game to get to that number where in mobile that's you know counter to everything that you do. You have to pay 30% of your revenue to market your game. So that's the one other thing. If you are going to be an indie and you are going to target these kinds of games, you have to make sure that it has those moments that are capturable that allow you to market the game. All right, let's get to a game that isn't the last game that we're going to talk about, but what's going on with it? This episode is sponsored by Meloco. More than 2 billion daily active users, over 2.8 million independent apps globally. That's the reach Maloco ads unlock for performance marketers who don't want to stop at the usual gardens.

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All right. Um, so Neil Duckman confirms more Last of Us. Over on the official Naughty Dog blog, Neil Duckman shared some red meat for gamers for The Last of Us day. I I know it's a popular franchise. I didn't know it was had its own holiday. But on the blog, we have a couple of very exciting projects in very early stages, so we can't say much about them at this point. I will tell you that

both projects will expand the cannon of The Last of Us beyond part one and part two. He goes on, "The world of The Last of Us means a great deal to us, and we wouldn't return to it unless we had something meaningful to say. We believe these stories are worth telling."
So, I think, you know, after what's their current game, Prophecy? Forget what it's called. Their new AAA franchise that they're working on is kind of caught in a negative internet spiral. So, it makes sense to me, of course, that they would announce to their fan base that they're still working on The Last of Us, especially after uh the success of the show.
Isn't this after they canled that multiplayer project? remember when Sony was like live service for everyone and multiplayer for everyone and then they canceled it.
Yeah, the cancel was back in 2023.
Okay. Well, let me talk about franchise because you know I'd love to talk about franchise. You guys say Trans Media. So, here's where I will say that they're I think they're kind of messing up a little bit. It feels like they're really late in coming to the party with this announcement and it sounds like they're very early in development. Season 3 is

coming out in 2027. We don't know when. I'm a huge fan of the TV show, by the way. Like, it's just so well done. It's one of the best examples of how you take an IP. What
the first season was amazing. The second season was [ __ ] horrific,
right, for Last of Us. Or am I crazy?
I don't know. I I liked it. I mean, it wasn't as good as the first season. The second game is split between season 2 and season 3.
But, I mean, the show still did really well. It still got all the ratings. Anyway, my point is that if you're gonna have the show and you're gonna have the game and now they're going to launch years apart, it's kind of like the same thing with Fallout. Like, they're just missing the boat on like the hype that comes with this IP awareness in the world and then the game's going to come out in like 3 years. And I mean, it'll still do well because it's a franchise, but I don't know, they're just kind of missing the boat on the timing of all of these things.
I just saw this article today that I read. It was um somebody from Hollywood. I forget about this but he was talking about the film adaptations and the fact

how crazy it is that the writers from these franchises like whether you were working on Last of Last of Us is an exception but for many of them like let's say God of War they're not brought in to the teams that are working and writing for the TV shows. So for example people who are doing God of War to my understanding don't have the writers from the God of War franchise. And it it really is kind of weird because Last of Us is an exception to this and it did so well and the story in the world was brought in so well that other film studios are not doing this and they're kind of excluding the writers from these franchises from the work on the trans media. Well, Last of Us, they I I think you're saying that they were included
and and it and that brought the world so well and then we're seeing some other, you know, titles without naming them, maybe Halo that that were kind of, you know, on a shaky ground compared to those. And it it was just weird that the people who have worked on a franchise and have written the content for it for two decades and know the world through and through, they're not brought in to

make the movie or TV show adaptation. So, in most cases,
it has to be a partnership. You have to have people that understand the IP working with the people that understand the medium that can bring it to life in the right ways. So, uh, get it.
Sorry, let me go back. Yeah.
Looking up this, I guess it wasn't critically as bad as I thought it was. I thought the second
Yes,
I thought the second season was terrible. I was like I It was unwatchable almost for me. I don't know. I love the first season. I was in. Right. So, all right. Maybe I'm the maybe I'm just the only outsider here. All right. Is it true that they have not released like the guys at Naughty Dog have not released a game since 2020?
Uh, they've done remasters of Last Festival.
Okay, that doesn't count. Yeah.
Oh, that's right. They did remaster it. Yeah, I was watching the video.
Wow. So, it's going to take seven years. Oh, no. They have intergalactic.
Yeah, that's new coming out.
Okay. It's a one team, one dream, right? It's not like they have like multiple teams that are working on like multiple products, right? So, exactly when is

this next Last of Us game supposed to come out?
PS6 launch title.
Oh, okay. Which could be [clears throat] 10 years from now.
In 10 years from now. [laughter]
Yeah. It's very early. Yeah.
Yeah. I get it. They they they shouldn't be doing that. They shouldn't be announcing things this early. This is just setting expectations and they're going to miss
trying to tell people that to get ahead of the franchise, something else is coming from them. That's what they're working on. And maybe they it's probably recruiting, right? Can you imagine if you're going recruiting and you want to go out and find people who love your IP to make your game
and and also in certain sectors of the internet, there's a lot of hate about this new IP.
So, I think they it's
fighting the tie to that by making it clear they didn't abandon the beloved Last of Us to work on this.
So, this is a P it's a more of a PR move than real like product strategy move maybe. probably.
All right.
All right. Let's fit in this last story.

So, uh, PC and console might not want to compete with GTA this November, but some mobile games are, and they're all coming from Chinese developers. Tencent, Perfect World are trying to get out in front of GTA's November 19th launch with free-to-play city games, free-to-play, you know, like these open world games. that he's missed and comes in January with Ananta which we saw headline opening night live which was at Gamescom. So Perfect World launched NTE which what the [ __ ] is NTE stand for?
Never to ever.
Looks like never to everess.
Yes, that's right. Never totally forgot about the name. I was abbreviating it. So, Perfect World launched NTE on PC, PS5, and mobile on April 29th of 26, seven months before GT GTA. It looks around 300 million in revenue by August. I know it's doing pretty well. I mean, I've been hearing I've been meaning for us to cover this, but we just haven't

really gone deep on it. Then, 10 cents Level Infinite soft launch Gangstar Mirage City under a Game Loft license on August 20th at 26. This is three months before GTA is out. It's only out in soft launch in Latin America, Mina, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, and then Level Infinite reported 30 million prerege. So, it's got a lot of hype going into what it is. Netis launches Ananta as a free-to-play game on in January. So, that one's coming out later. And it'll be crossplatform. So, it's PC, mobile, PS5. And this is a game that was, you know, got a lot of in a sense buzz because it is anime GTA is pretty much. So, uh, NTE earned only 9 million on mobile in August. Percenter tower, chill bases one state, R, uh, RP earned about 7 million and Mirage City earned about, uh, 400,000, but again, that one's only in soft launch. So some sometimes the the

thing that I wanted to talk about about this story is that there is like a drafting that can happen when something big in the market comes out. How do you draft off of that? And so having a knockoff copy can be a great way to capitalize on the marketing success at the premium. So my quick toy story I worked on Jurassic Park or Jurassic World toys for many many years. And if you ever have a kid that bought one of those dinosaurs on the side and in the commercial we would say look for the mark of Jurassic Park and there was a JP kind of logo that was like on the side the shoulder or the you know the leg of all the dinosaurs and that was a way for us to combat all of the cheap free unbranded dinosaurs that would be sold at retail cuz moms would be like I'll just take this one is cheaper. So, we were trying to say, "No, no, no. You want the cooler cooler one. You want the actual movie one." And so, that was a way that we were able to combat the knockoffs. And so, in this case, I think the games are the knockoffs and they're

capitalizing on the momentum behind GTA. It's the same fantasy. It's the play pattern. They're offering them on mobile, which for many of these markets, they don't have console for GTA. This is going to be how they can feel like they're engaging in that play on a platform in a way that they can do that for people don't and also who don't want to wait for it on on PC. So Ethan, as our game guru, what are you seeing when you look at the genre and where it appeals most? When I saw Ananta, I thought of you because of your anime geekiness. So what what are you seeing? What's really interesting when you think about just the history of competition with GTA and how much it's fallen by the wayside over the past decade plus as like the budget for GTA has exploded and GTA Online has just been an amazing live ops multiplatform juggernaut. Right? GTA has two vectors of competition. One is the open world sandbox genre and one is the specific combination of open world genre plus crime scene. So like Neverness to Everness and Anta are open

world sandbox games, but they're not the same core fantasy as GTA necessarily. They're not that direct competitor with the modern crime theme. GTA as a package combines the two. And with the inclusion of GTA online, it's had just a longunning and highly monetized multiplayer service. So you know, to me, the most durable vectors of competition is the larger rise of open world sandbox games and people really building a niche for themselves. So like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Spider-Man, Cyberpunk, Red Dead Redemption, Batman Arkham, Forza, Yakuza, these are all in a way competing with GTA in these giant openw world sandbox games where you can do anything within a very, you know, within a specific fantasy. And there used to be a lot of direct competition um to GTA. True Crime Streets of LA was a big hit in the PS2 era. Saints Row, Scarface, Mafia, EA had Godfather games, and really most of these fell by the wayside over the past couple of console generations. Saints Row was kind of the

last one standing. And the last Saints Row did not sell very well, and I think it probably killed that franchise. And we've actually also for a long time had freetoplay GTA competition. The first Gangstar game is probably 2009, I think, that it came out. But you know these GTA games until recently we haven't really seen them be chart topping top grossing games the way we have forex genre or or gotacha games anant specifically and this one Mishka is showing this neverness to Everness. Like I said these anime games are anime open world games. They don't feel like they're necessarily direct GTA.
Yeah. You can almost say like Genchin Impact is a GTA competitor. This is
No.
No. Well, Genchin Impact has more of a a fantasy world and these at least Ananta, if you want to show that, is much more placed in a modern city. It's got kind of a modern influencer theme to it. Ananta's really interesting in that it is free-to-play open world action RPG.

It's anime GTA, but it's also an anime Spider-Man game, and it's also single player. So, it's a free-to-play single player game that is monetizing entirely in cosmetics. So, I wrote about this after it was one of the big wish list winners winners coming out of
how do you how do you spell an?
So, yeah. So, I wrote about this a couple months ago. It's a really interesting bet that they're making on an in monetizing cosmetics only. And frankly, I just don't see it being a financial success. I think that this game is going to get incredible amounts of downloads when it comes out. I think it's going to get a lot of play on creator platforms because this is a free AAA quality game with tons of single player content and a modern theme that's going to connect with the audience. Like I think this is going to get a lot of DAU, but I think that it is not going to be a business success out of the gate given cosmetics only single player monetization and they're either going to

need to pivot very quickly against what they've said is their monetization goals or they're going to need to get co-op and multiplayer.
Anant is a single player game. Single player freeto play. How does that work? It's Imagine GTA released as a single player game that only sold a battle pass where you could win. Exactly. That That's why I'm not predicting a business success here. Unless this is getting so much play on streaming that people really care about their outfit to show off to other players on content creation. Like it's not going to monetize at all, but nowhere near as much to recoup the budget that must have gone into this game. It's
a premium game.
Yeah, it's a premium game that they're giving away for free.
Looks amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it looks really fun. It looks pretty awesome.
So, like I said, I think it's going to do killer downloads,
but I don't think it's it's going to do uh incredible monetization. But, you know, Chris, I'll I'll throw it to you here. Like, why do you think we haven't seen anybody really go toe-to-toe in a

big way with GTA or even, you know, there's COD and Battlefield and, you know, War Dogs and Arc Raiders. Like, why isn't there more GTA competition? Look, fundamentally it's just the amount of effort and time and design that goes into something like GTA where it's like a 50 to 100 hour plus type experience just is not replicable. It's the same idea is that you can never compete with World of Warcraft head on because they've in their case have had 20 years worth of game development in systems and in content. I think again I keep coming to the same point is like not only is it really hard to replicate that type of fidelity, quality and design. It's also that's what the customer expects now, right? They've seen it over and over and over again with GTA and Red Dead Redemption and that's what they want. They don't want Saints Row. They certainly don't want the Minds Eye game, right? Which came out and it was aing disaster, right? So it's like you almost impossible to execute against the fidelity and the quality that the customer is expecting and demanding.

Saints Row is another good example where I mean Embracer just [ __ ] that thing up. Just by definition, you know, Embracer up everything, but but Saints Row actually had the first five or six hours of that game was the quality that customers really wanted. If you look back back at the reviews, like it was like the same type of experience as GTA, but it lasted five or six hours and the rest of it was absolute trash, right? because you can't make that kind of game design and that you don't they don't have the they didn't have the talent to actually make that happen or the budget to make make a a 50 to 100 hour experience. Anyway, I think it's just really expensive and and no one can really do it or have the budget to do it. Now, I think there is some risk from the Chinese perspective if they do have thousands and thousands of game developers building these type of this type of content. It's possible. But the I think the fundamental problem is they don't have that design element that the GTA team has that is going to be as compelling for the west.
The localization job on getting the

satire and writing that is part of what makes GTA a cultural juggernaut would be really hard for anybody to replicate.
Actually impossible really. It I mean let's be real it's impossible to replicate that. I think
the same way you can't you can't write those guys. You hire them out of B out Rockstar, right?
No.
No.
Okay.
No.
This is about players on mobile and especially players on mobile in other regions. Like you don't have any of these play patterns available to you on mobile. There's a huge gap for fantasy, the fantasy play pattern of I get to be a criminal in the mobile game experience. And so I think what I'm trying to bring and it is ironic that it is Chinese developers that are throwing a lot of people at it that would have to do the research and maybe you're right that they are not going to get the nuance and the satire of some of the criminal worlds that we have but maybe if they do it with their own markets or they pick a different market. So in any

event like I think I'm I'm predicting that we're going to see you know some of these games just crush it drafting off of the GTA marketing. That's why we're seeing a, you know, never NTE and why we're seeing the Mafia City game get out in advance of that moment is so that there's something for somebody to pick up
on mobile that isn't accessible while there's on on PlayStation. Your hypothesis here is that when GTA launches, there's going to be a halo effect on these direct fantasy games which are absolutely
neveress and one state and the winners are going to have a couple weeks or months of really good organic downloads.
And then we'd say that something or probably one state RP and maybe Gangstar if it's out worldwide are going to have good halo effect. I wouldn't expect Neverness to Everness or Ananta to get Halo effect because you wouldn't you wouldn't search GTA on the app store and then in your mind say, "Oh, this anime fantasy thing looks like it." But One

State RP looks like it. Gangstar looks like it.
I will concede that you might see some uptick in Asia, China, and other countries like that, but you're not going to see anything in the West that's meaningful. The reason that people don't play these games on mobile is because they're playing it on console, right? And the only reason that people play this stuff on mobile is because they don't have consoles because these games suck on mo on mobile, right? The controls are terrible and the monetization doesn't make sense or work really. I mean, some of these games are doing reasonably well in China, but like nothing compared to some of the other types of games.
What's your take if you know there's probably many developers who are doing these type of a GTA style games for Roblox? Would that work?
No.
No. Oof. I mean,
unless you're No, unless it's pay to win or pay to torture children or like some kind of like really terrible mechanic like
pay to torture.
What?
That's That's my favorite. That's my That's torture model to be honest. It's uh it's

steal. Yeah. Any by the way
every steel game it's paid to torture. So yeah, let's let's do that. Are you stealing [ __ ] from people's houses and stuff? There we go. whenever there's mechanics that work on
Roblox it needs to seal games.
Okay, I I do have to say Ananta looks crazy. If you folks haven't seen it, an enta looks insane. And to learn that that is a game that somebody just sends for free. It's not even a multiplayer game. You can just download this game on PS5 and just crank it all day long. That's crazy.
It's crossplatform. So, it's on mobile as well. So, that's where they're trying to
It's a bold bet. It is a bold bet. And I am predicting a pivot pretty quickly.
I'm predicting that executives are just looking at this and Xbox or PlayStation be like, "Holy [ __ ]
they can do this." Anyways,
all right, let's let's wrap it up and we will see you all next week.

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