TWIG Bonus Episode: Holiday Special (UEFN, Royal Kingdom, and the Steam race)

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to deconstructor of fun this week in games the special holiday unscripted episode number what number are we on 314 where we are not going to actually give you our Insider takes on the news because we didn't prepare anything today we're just joining on the podcast and we're going to just make it up as we go along so welcome to what we normally don't do on the podcast hi everyone I'm Jen donaho and I fill the marketing and Publishing role on our action RPG that we call this week in games today we have Phil uh Candy Crush gift card connoisseur something about economy and game monetization Eric Crest Chief strategy and investing officer Mishka is apparently has crappy Wi-Fi and is bummed but he cannot join us Adam is

also doing real work I'm sure so we are welcoming our other hosts that we don't get to see that often so Laura Laura Toranto puzzle product Queen rejoining just for boxing day it's me Ethan Ethan Le you I'm here escaping my family the day after Christmas I don't know how all you Christians Do It Christmas takes too much energy Hanukkah is not this much work I am exhausted absolutely exhausted from yesterday oh well I I guess let's start that off and say it's the day after Christmas and the day after the first night of Hanukkah fellow Jews thank you happy Hanukkah and it's boxing day but but you know Laura says that because she's partly Canadian what the [ __ ] is boxing day it's the 26th in the UK it's Boxing Day not even Canadian it's a it's a British thing I don't know if it's Canadian I mean it might be but it's definitely English for sure oh okay all

right well there you go that gave me no absolutely no explanation of what the [ __ ] boxing day is I think it's just a holiday it's just like a bank just a holiday all right sounds stupid somebody chat GPT that while we're keep going on [Music] here kickass liveops need kickass tools that's where heroic Labs comes in they just released a massive update to their sator liveops platform and having done my research I can say with confidence that it's second to none in a single product you get everything you need including event capture player segmentation feature Flags remote configuration AB testing experimentation live events calendar messaging retention grafing analytics and so much more if you're serious about running live services in a game get serious about the tools you use connect with heroic labs and make some serious cheese with your live Ops

all right we have no organization so I'll kick it off and just say we were going to do a little I think good news bad news or what's going on with each of us because Crest and crest's family has good news bad news that he wanted to share all right yeah bad news good news I'll do bad news first Mr Jacob broke a bone in his ankle so he is out for months probably will miss most of the season if not all he's bummed out but never fear there's far more basketball to play in the next three and a half years so he'll be fine he's only a freshman the great news is that my daughter Natalie got into University of Pennsylvania which is an IB Le school for those that don't know it's not penate pretty much been a goal and an aspiration to get in Ivy League school since before she was conceived like but for some reason some reason and I couldn't put my finger on it it been a bit Bittersweet right for

the last you know since you got accepted the thing about daughters you know sons are great right but they're like you know you can just shove them around and wrestle with them and whatever but girls daughters are different right when she was born it like takes your breath away like how much you could love this little thing as much as you do the daughters and that lasts until the teenage years right and that's what it really tests your metal right and maybe Ethan you don't have a teenager yet no my oldest is n oh well oh oh I I I'm a step monster to a teenage girl I I I can attest to the Jackal andh High nature that happens when hormones hit and come into play yeah and there are these darling little cutest little things that want to engage with you and they're so they look up to you longingly of oh you're such a hero to me and then 3 Days Later they're locked in their room on their phones and wear all black and

don't want to talk to you over again yeah and and I you want to think that your experience is going to be different but it's not you know so when Natalie was 11 I asked her like what do you want for your birthday and she looked at me straight in the eye and she said freedom and I'm like what the [ __ ] does that mean right she says I want a phone I want you to stop looking at my text and I want to go to the mall with my friends all right she basically wanted her independence get the [ __ ] away from us basically what the [ __ ] that meant right and it was all kind of downhill from there right but it is a natural form of development for the last six years it's just been like this like it's just and it's not that she's mean per se she just ignores me constantly right it was hard right so anyway after three or four days after getting this news I was kind of realized that I was actually upset because she's actually officially leaving us you know this is the official

like she's gone right and despite the six years of being ignored I going to miss having her around a um so I doubt she'll ever hear this but I want to give her a heartfelt shout out I love her I'm incredibly proud of her and everything that she's achieved and I can't wait to see where the journey takes her so that's my update on the kids that is incredibly touching actually from our villain of the episode like if it's been a goal to get her to an ivv League school since before she was born that's going to bring her to therapy as the next step on her journey this is yeah this is often often the push back of that goal but just to be clear my wife went to pen so that definitely helped the uh equation a bit oh wow she's in the bathroom listening to me right now the wife were the daughter how much trouble are you in right now she just texted me a oh she heard you oh wow the

whole thing oops oops oh well she'll never listen to podcast she's not that interested in gaming does anyone's significant other or family member listen to the podcast God no let's keep it that way I I think I made my wife listen to 15 minutes once that was bad she doesn't like me talking about my career or the industry not on a podcast so why would she listen to him back I can't I can't get my wife to listen to me for more than like 10 seconds right and then she's off and doing her thing I've sent one or two episodes to my family so my my mother and my father are from the Bronx New York and so if I ever talk about them I have to talk about them with a bronx accent and so I sent them I don't know like maybe one of my first episodes that I was on and oh Jenifer we're so proud of you oh you you're so you're so smart they have no idea what talking about at

all my mom still thinks I work at Disneyland when I told her I worked at Disney she's like oh so you work at the rides and you do the I'm like no Mom I do licensing what's licensing yeah so this this whole thing was just they they just thought it was cool that I was on a podcast they had no idea what I was saying all right so let's do corrections well hold up I got an update for my kids oh okay get my one my one C token per quarter oh yeah let's do it let's do it a revolution that happened or maybe a revelation we bought Ka a banana and I've been trying to get this cat into this banana for the better course of a year and a a miracle happened Kaa went into her banana oh God there's a picture oh my God and she looks super cute and she'll never use the banana again and there you go that's my my cat quarterly update what is the is it just for cute pictures or is there a reason for the Banana's existence just for cute pictures basically I mean this is like a

flushy it barely looks like a banana it looks more like a lime to me I don't know yeah maybe color on this photo but Phil's cat is sticking out of a banana couch for cats banana cat bed it's a cat bed we really want right here how much did this cost how much this cosmetic transaction 20 20 bucks on Amazon it was totally worth it we got a small banana and they couldn't fit in it and so we kept getting increasingly larger and larger bananas until we got this one philli you need to start making babies seriously Eric you don't even want to know man like we actually got a stroller for the cats oh my God you got a stroller I resisted it I said no but like Felix just wants to be in his little stroller he like only wants to go outside for 30 seconds you're not wrong Eric you're not wrong yeah wow we got we got to have a chat with your wife actually I was thinking about doing a whole post on my C cats because Dy who

is the fattest cat on the planet that's a big girl like my entire phone are pictures of my cats and not my wife and so healthy healthy well you know yes very very healthy and then and then Inky is the Ninja who is like the skinniest little one who looks like a little worm and so that's that that's Inky so I'll post pictures because she's adorable oh oh I forgot one other thing it's not a cat thing but my wife sold the 1974 BMW 2002 that she rebuilt so she finished it and we sold it to this young guy who lives in Santa Barbara and is like so excited so excited and so how much may I ask how much you sold it for I mean I guess you can ask so we at 13 13,000 wow kind of low it was kind of low it wasn't everything we had hoped for but we want want to close the chapter of the car

because her new chapter is day trading and that's her new hobby by the way that was the first car I ever owned in college was the BMW 2002 I thing was dope mine was Cherry but Cherry this was a the Polaris silver wow uh so I'll I'll post pictures of that one too because she basically learned on YouTube how to rebuild a car had no experience ever work working on any car went to the University of YouTube downloaded all of the books from the you know like BMW and then rebuilt a car wow it's pretty so cool that's impressive she is so much cooler than me all I do is get on a stupid podcast like this can I hang out with her I mean why am I hanging out with you I don't know I really don't yeah so yeah next time you're down like come and hang out with her because she's 10 times better than me I'm in the market uh for a Porsche I'm getting my Porsche back oh

oh now that the kids are so part of the S the good news of I forgot the the good good news is now that she's leaving right I can get my Porsche back because the I don't have to drive the kids around anymore right Jacob can drive almost anyway so I get my two-seater back which one are you getting 911 oh 911 yeah most likely a s or GTS in the 991.1 if anyone knows Porsche so it's the last naturally aspirated Porsches they make the best sound I would say not the fastest by any measure but they are amazing but older yeah it's G to be cool I can't wait but of course I'm looking for the right color combo so I really want to get a dark blue one but they're really hard to find so I'm out there looking Laura tell us like what have you been up to girl well I feel like one I have no kids and no pets I feel like I should go upstairs and get my house plant and then just bring it down you have a boyfriend

oh yeah friend at least the house plant like is is something more I take care of I'd say and at least it's you know it's not its leaves are not wilting it's not going to pen but it's alive so I feel like that's that's an accomplishment your measure of success is that you haven't killed a plant yet this this year oh I've had it for two years it is it's thriving it still has one flower it's great dude you're ready for like six kids like Ethan right yeah now that you've had a pet for two years I yep nope that's nope nope nope Seattle still good how's Seattle winter treating you girl you know it hasn't snowed which I'm grateful for because the area I'm in is T has tons of Hills when you get snow it gets cold you get ice was it last year or the year before there were just the roads would freeze and cars that were parked would just start slowly sliding down down the hills and then my insurance premiums

went crazy went crazy so so far I'd say it's been a win no snow no ice not particularly cold we've got some sunshine couple good days I don't know I'm liking it it's it's not bad it's not bad I mean it's no California don't get me wrong no but yeah no Ethan little update what's going on you I wasn't planning on making news today but since this is an incredibly loose episode and our one thing that's prepared actually touches directly on my life I might as well so uh I exited my startup five months ago to gamef actually my ufn startup me and my partner IBS joined gamef fam where I've been secretly working as the VP of game design for the past five months focusing just on ufn so far we did this game Lego parkour world it's an official Lego game it's like Laura you'd like it it's like an hour or

so of Mario Style platforming it's I'm really happy with the quality of it I've worked on and while we're on this subject I do want to do a huge correction for last week right because it was it was like moronic what I said right because I totally got the quote wrong and it was totally my fault but anyway my comment about no teams being profitable on Roblox and ufn is absolutely Incorrect and inacurate right yes and when I was saying it I was realizing I actually even knew that I was saying it wrong they're definitely small teams and individuals making money profitably on the platform particularly on Roblox the correct quote and I was quote is a friend close to the stuff is that there's not a single Venture back Roblox Studio that wasn't successful before taking money that is profitable and he suspects that it's the same for ufn you can't reliably make money on yet on these platforms and the best economics look like hyper casual without ad revenue for now that was his comment right so basically not a single Venture back Roblox studio is

profitable so game fam is Venture backed it's backed by friends of the podcast play Ventures I believe that we are a profitable company I think someone got a quote here from Joe so Joe of course reached out right away and said you're an idiot I I I I could do an impression but I I would like to keep my job in 2025 so I won't try and do Joe's voice look Joe doesn't [ __ ] around right he's like dude look I I'll let anything go but I'm not letting that go you [ __ ] no he didn't call me a [ __ ] but the tone of his text or his message was definitely you were an idiot right I'm a [ __ ] for what I said last week and then I said here's what I'm what am going to say you tell me what you think right and so he's like basically gamef is profitable in the back half of 24 once they start focusing on profitability and not growth but clearly by the way that doesn't mean they're profitable in 2024 so they're still not profitable just in the back half of 2024 right and they have huge growth plans in 2025 all being cash flow

positive according to Mr Joe and then the Spiel and the pitch and what I like about Joe is the guy's never not pitching you know not not selling right this is based on our portfolio with several genre leading games that net in the seven figures per year in inet purchases and are advertising and require much smaller teams than mobile freet to-play games it is true that many of the other VCB Studios have no Revenue at all with perhaps one exception this is a hyper competitive space and is simply not built in the mobile freeto playay foundation and the most vcac companies are pursuing so he feels that a lot of these VC studios are not pursuing the proper model for Roblox and the pitch this is what I love about him Roblox is something new different and evolving and it's a harbinger of a very different gaming future as it continues to age up and aging it is Roblox is Poise to be a significant disruptive force in the

gaming and media business yes you go you preach it Joe hallelujah praise me anyway yeah so correction and a little bit of a commentary for our friend Joe at gamef and evidently Ethan's boss and my boss I I don't understand people like him but I love people like him they have non-stop energy they never stop they're like the energizers of bunny they just keep going going going going going you know he's like the consumate sales guy right like like does not ever turn off the sales side of things you know for good and for evil I think I will say ufn is a very challenging platform because you're competing with thousands and thousands of other teams some with a questionable grasp on IP rights and you're also competing with epic directly epic's released a lot of cool stuff just in the last month like ballistic and like Lego block city right their kind of GTA style

GTA online roleplay game and their Lego Odyssey their Survival game like these are all really cool games but I'm competing against them and it's a completely unfair Battlefield right they're they are now which they weren't at the start of ufn they are taking the majority of the royalty engagement pool for themselves thanks to the success of the games that they run on the platform and it's unfair because they get to use tools and capabilities that are not released to the rest of us so like I literally can't compete I can't do a survival crafting game I've looked at we can't we just like the UI is not there as a Creator to do a crafting system that would be at all like useful to the players and what's one of the most successful things on the platform is a survival crafting game made by my friends at Lego and epic so it's just it's a it's a alling platform how about

the notion about monetization on the platform like are are they going to allow alternative monetization just they're never they're never going to I mean the the alternative monetization that is allowed is what gamef is great at which is Integrations with brands or doing bespoke games for Brands that's not what I'm talking I know but but they're never doing MTX they're never doing MTX they're never doinga they will because they will fail if they do not yeah that's yeah me I'm I can say that with absolute confidence that they will fail if they do not do this I think what you think failure is is is different than what Tim Sweeney thinks failure is yeah I agree with Ethan on that too it was that unreal Fest and Tim Sweeney's comments in the opening in 2023 and what they've written like it's absolutely clear that they have the opposite of interest of allowing us to sell IAP or do anything for v-bucks that's not what this is like it's a red line it's absolute red line for them as long as Tim's in charge like they're not going to do gacha or other monetization methods with within and that means it's going to fail for third party basically

like there's just no way it could be successful for third party it's going to be successful for epic the challenge is like your job is basically to keep people engaged in fortnite in between you know the highlights of seasons and epic pays you for that and the payoff pools were great at the start in 2023 and now like I think on fortnite G there's a chart somewhere that like their estimate is that epic is taking something like 60 to 70% of the engagement payout pool for themselves with their rocket League game and Lego game and Ballistic and reloaded and this and that and it's just like sure it hurt my feelings when all those VCS said no to me we don't we not sold on ufn as a platform yet but it's just not Standalone a great a platform that you can generate a VC siiz outcome on yeah epic taking that that such an epic fail right God an epic epic fail look I be clear I really do think that epic can be

successful without doing this but there's no way third party can be successful without changing the monetization this is impossible there's no reason to build games for UF unless you all you want all that is is just practice on unreal right I would say it's incredibly fun and like as somebody who has mostly done games that are like user interface on mobile phone because like at the end of the day that's what a puzzle game is or a puzzle RPG is it was great it was so much fun to do like a Mario Style platformer to do a third person looter shooter Style game and like have something that two people made playable in a couple of months like so from that perspective it's awesome and the platform is getting better dayto day so like what you can do with one designer and one programmer and no server engineers and no art team and just buying assets off the asset store it's it's really awesome and gratifying but if you're trying to run let's say a s 10 person team at like a 10,000 Allin

per month headcount like you you can't do that that's I mean you would have to basically as a small team release one of the most profitable games on the platform and then grow the team to keep the engagement High based on already being profitable and there's you know there's this game like this series Havoc Hotel they're probably doing it with Havoc Hotel two and three but in terms of this is not a platform that you can generate VC style through throw money into the rocket ship and watch a take off outcomes like you could on Facebook back in the day or like you could on mobile like those are really seismic platform shifts that I don't you know we're all still hop for the next but even an ongoing concern a profitable ongoing concern is going to be really challenging they could have popularity for like a few weeks or a month or something and then fall off a cliff right and start all over let me just be clear you cannot scale games the way you can on mobile and continue to acquire users and bring them in the way you can

because you can't afford it because you're not making any [ __ ] money right so it's like it's an impossible situation for developers on ufn it's really disappointing to me because I thought this was going to be like a real big opportunity for growth in the industry and and more for smaller Indies to like showcase their their Wares but this is just doesn't seem like that's it at all I think it's still that like I would say the platform it most resembles is Flash the flash games market after when the portal still existed but like you couldn't reliably sell your game for a $5,000 exclusive deal in new grounds Armor Games you're gonna compare it to flash are you kidding me a lot of great games came out of the flash game portals in the web browser era like a lot of great very fun games and a lot of developers trained up in that Marketplace and went on to like I mean I have a game over on my shelf Last Stand aftermath which is a PS5 game that the developer started as a flash developer

and a very successful one and that's a brand that he took from flash like from armor games all the way through to PS5 so you basically say ufn is now training wheels for steam yeah is that I mean it's like I think that's a thing right like especially when you think of the engine yeah when you think of how the engine's going to evolve that UE FN and UEI are going to combine one day in ue6 but if you can't make money on the plat form that you're building for then you're just basically going to practice there and then bring it on to another platform where you actually can make money yep EGS right because you're GNA have the same coding language you're GNA roll it right off I don't think that was the goal I I completely agree with you I don't think I mean maybe it was the goal in some PowerPoint presentation but yeah you know maybe that was the hypothesis of a pitch deck that one might have gotten turned down from by all the early stage gaming investors um maybe maybe that is a core part of a hypothesis somewhere that you

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your marketing efforts making every ad dollar work smarter with apps flyer that's your new reality dive deep into Data driven insights that reveal exactly where your users come from and how they'll interact with your app apps lier where your app's potential meets [Music] performance okay well let's wave our magic wand if you were the Great Tim Sweeny and you could do anything to make this better what would you do I would kick epic out of the engagement payout pool I might shrink it from that 40% of fortnite Revenue down to something more realistic but like if they're taking 70% of the money using tools to create games that we don't have access to like what's the [ __ ] point what what am I even doing right I would kick epic out and I would shrink the engagement pool and that to me would make it a plat form more worth developing for if you don't

have a an unfair Advantage like gamef fam has but that doesn't solve the underlying problem right where you can't design games to make money right you design games for engagement and that's a limited pool of money like the spend depth is not there in order toate outs returns not every platform has to generate games that can make $650 million we have mobile so fortnite doesn't have to be that maybe we could start with six .5 million maybe that would be good there are games that have made that much money 100% yeah yeah the pit has definitely made way more than that like the guy who made the pit is definitely on a boat so very disappointing okay so what else what else you you you would change the Rev share pool yeah I would kick epic out I would shrink it accordingly okay it's just unfair to compete against epic larger teams more time and tools that they don't give to the rest of us that's okay okay what what else Discovery I

think I I think I've heard I mean I know they're constantly working on Discovery like they're probably on their like 700th version of the fortnite algorithm so I'm not going to comment on anything that's that I know is a constant work in motion this is going to again sound insane I only have a 100 analytic events and the analytic events can't have any payload with them it can only be count that something fired so like yeah Phil's eyes uh for those just listening his eyebrows went all the way up basically no no payloads no metadata so like the most useful thing that analytics are good for are creating level funnels like in our Lego parkour worlds like players who started how many of them got this far and then figuring out what levels people are dropping off at and improving them it's good for that and good for saying like like in our Obby on a bike game we just rolled out a set of features right before Christmas and it's like is anybody engaging with the

Playtime rewards feature right just a a pure binary yes or no per unique you know but like you really can't do a lot with the analytics so I would like a lot more abilities there so that I could you know cut data by platform for instance or you know like more run proper test to try and boost the engagement in my game because it's tough It's really tough with just a 100 effects what about the licensed content I think when I talked to you a while ago we were talking about like they just did this integration with turtles where you you can make a Turtles game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but you have to pay 15% like what if that was Star Wars what if that was I don't know Batman what if it was all those things would be cool but more for other like more in that amateur game developer sense because if you make a Turtles game 15% of your engagement Revenue goes to Paramount if you make a

Legos game 15% of it goes to Lego so already an incredibly difficult platform to build on why am I gonna bother with the turtles game when I'm losing 15% of what Revenue I could have and I don't see enough additional promotion on the platform to make up for that 15% right like if Turtle games were just like front and center then of course like it would be worth it if you're not doing it for the joy of making a teen Ninja Turtles game there's just not a lot of reason to do that instead of a vanilla fortnite experience oh interesting any other magic wand advice this is fascinating this is like a um if you were Tim Sweeney for a day just give us everything you have that's it if you can make a survival crafting game why can't I and I thought they had announced this a long time ago Ethan but it looks like they veered away from that like I thought they said they're going to come eventually it'll come eventually I'm sure but like there's going to be by the time it's released an 18-month lag

between Lego Odyssey and my ability to do a crafting game like that's just not a fair competitive environment do you think that's what players want to do though like oh yeah Lego Odyssey is one of the most popular experiences on the platform people at that this audience if you think of their age and that they've grown up on Minecraft and other games Survival crafting games were were craftings at the core and how successful the Lego game is they absolutely want it right and just the ability to take two things from my inventory and turn them into something else in my inventory actually has an incredible amount of uses Beyond just crafting we used it extensively for different reward and event harness features in Legendary game of Heroes for instance and that's a pretty common thing in RPGs so just like there's a lot you could do if you had more UI capabilities than we have currently did did you try to make something in Roblox I haven't done anything in Roblox okay so you've only yeah you've only been on the Roblox you can do I mean you

can do a lot more in terms of the breadth of genres and types of games you can bu yeah yeah I mean they've been at it for like 12 plus years so they probably have a lot more tools yeah interesting okay any other ufn tidbits gang or Laura do you want to talk about puzzles Royal Kingdom or anything I so as a player can I just say that I do think that in Crest you said you were kind yelling at me last week as a player I do find Royal Kingdom from our friends at dream cannibalistic to me as a player versus Royal match I'm I'm level 650 on Royal Kingdom and it feels like the same game they are very similar they are very very similar I actually have not checked in on it since I gave my little tidbit to Neil long at mobile gamer. Biz there are distinct differences but there is a lot of similarities so I wouldn't be

surprised if there is some cannibalization I think the question for me is going to be if they're going to take players from Royal match and bring them over to Royal Kingdom which I believe is a fundamentally more difficult game in terms of level by level attempts for Success you're going to need to play more levels over and over again to win those levels can they monetize them better so that is something I would need to take a look at how long is about a month maybe in a couple more weeks have a look see how the revenue is doing I want to look at what the arow is in the US also compare that to Royal match I mean the ideal would be you have two distinct audiences but if you're going to make a match three game with similar theme with similar levels similar feel you're going to you're still going to end up with probably a large overlap of those same players that is going to cannibalize your first game so but I'm hopeful I'm just excited it's one of the there hasn't been that many new releases this year especially in puzzle I'm just

excited we had we even had like a match three a new match three game technically hard launch this past year doesn't look good as I pull up now you pulled it up so I've got uh Royal match Royal Kingdom downloads and revenue for all countries all devices last 90 days oh looks like it's going up the little Revenue looks it's it's still pretty small yeah look let's see I mean this is 200,000 a day versus 3 million a day yeah 200k a day is not bad it it takes time to build up your da and for those things to stack which is why we looked at category rankings between the two you know day since launch basis I don't know if this the best way necessarily to look at this at this stage I I agree it needs a little bit more time but I think it's it's unfair to compare the two on this basis I would agree I mean Royal match when I look if I remember their chart correctly when they first launched it it was a slope it

took a while to get to where it was and they had to I mean think of for anyone who out there who's actually who played Royal match and soft launch I did I don't even think it had half the live Ops I don't even remember if it had any live Ops it was very lightweight they've been layering features and then features and on top of features on top of features since what it came out 2020 so over the last four years it's going to take time for Royal King them to to do the same thing and also when Royal match started releasing a lot of their live Ops events some of them were repeats and copies and some of them were not you still got to be able to find the right types of live Ops that will fit for the game so this is why I don't want to like I'm waiting I'm waiting and I do want to pick at um when I was looking at Royal match if I remember the ARP Dow for the US I mean it was something insane it was like either $3 or $4 it was pretty high relative to the other countri for realy match and so I'd be curious I want to see how the US performs for Royal

Kingdom but not yet I do want to give it some time okay that's fine that's fine good question though Phil you want to you want to also wait on Marvel Rivals versus what's our shoot like how we're how we're tracking on Shooters yeah let's let's let's definitely revisit that in 2025 I will say that any optimism I had has has quickly vanished it looks like we're having a linear decline for both Marvel Rivals and for Path of Exile too meanwhile Delta Force is steady Edy and there could be an inflection point in a couple months where Delta Force overtakes both of them just by not declining while the other two continue to decline we'll continue to track this one definitely like one of the major story lines entering 2025 is what's going to happen to these games but I would say so far it looks like it's following the path we've seen for a lot of other hot new releases this year which is hot start and then massive decline Delta Force I don't quite have an explanation for why it's been so steady I was looking at VG insights and they said 13% of the players are in China which is really bizarre to me I guess they're vpnn in because remember

the game is distributed on 10 cense platform in China you don't need to do the global version of steam if you're in China maybe they're just trying to like destroy some Europeans and Americans on global servers yeah I have question marks around why Delta Force has been so steady it just it doesn't pass a sniff test for me normally you see more shape to the PSU curves more in day inflection points and we don't see that here but if you again just look at the numbers from a high level Delta Force Path of Exile declines and Delta Force has been steady Edy how's the the super viive superv done it's done it's toast it's toast it's it's going with the Mountaintop game Spectre divide it's it's looking really bad I mean again it all comes down to China for them I think it's do or die and I would say there's another podcast segment I I would love for Michigan to have with some of these Founders in 2025 when you have all this capital and money you've invested you know these awesome I would argue great thesises about the games that they're building and then you kind of bomb out you know right outside right outside the

gate what do you do next you know do you try to revive this do you immediately move on to your new project I think that's a very tough situation to be in as a Founder on what you do once you have these early returns and I'd be very curious to see what's going through these Founders heads obviously the statute of limitations probably won't pass for another couple years but I'm very curious about how these Founders are approaching their problems crazy well one final thing maybe for us to talk about is is getting ready for the golden twig Awards I don't know why we named it the golden twig Awards and not just the deconstructor of fun Awards but hey it is what it is so winning the 2024 worst branded game award show is yeah well like we so we actually did like a little survey last year and we were like what should the name be and it was pretty much like torn with deconstructor of fun Awards and the golden twig Awards I don't Mishka was really pushing for for that one all right so let me just do a quick review of last year's 2023

topics and winners to give you a sense of I don't think we're going to record it next week I think we're taking next week off and then we'll probably have to get ready for the golden Twigs in the the first week of of January so number one topic of the year was the unity runtime fee oh my god really feels like 2023 so this is 2023 yeah this is like not this year right like so this is remember that was like oh my God that was the new story that kept kept on giving correction of the Year Microsoft won't acquire Activision I think chis we gave you an award for that yeah it's sitting right behind me I'm the honor the honor is yours most damage taken embracer which is a repeat winner is that gonna maybe that get we should just keep giving it to we should just have a category for embracer year the embracer award yeah which is like could mean like so many different things use as a verb most disappointing game

Starfield from Bethesda I think it's going to be hard to beat Justice League Suicide Squad killed the Justice League this year yeah that's yeah I it's no no Concord yeah Concord but Concord is an original Ip that nobody was hyped like yeah there is a lot of talent at that studio that built that game but like rock steady made some of the best games that have ever existed with the Batman games yeah and for them to go from that to kill the Justice League it's going to be hard to top that game of the year multi-award winner down to I saw it on the steam sale for 350 and I thought oh I'll check it out for 350 and then I remembered I already had it for free on the epic game store so my God you know well maybe we need a new C category which is how far the mighty have fallen that's just me that's mean everybody Rockstar is a better game developer than I am so even with kill the Justice League so I probably have

the sense having been at a lur that it's not all their fault there's a lot of pressure that comes when you have a license game that is that doesn't work mice nuts oh I love our category so this is our best financially meaningless game Pikman 4 I think Laura and Ethan your fans yeah is it going to be astrobot Eric would you say astrobot is mice nuts or because it's sold enough copies no I think I think that's done well enough yeah but actually it fits the category like well Reed but not financially meaningful what other contenders for mice nuts game of the year are we are they I don't know that's that's a tough one this year yeah we're gonna have to like think about that what were the unit sales of echo of wisdom well enough could be super well received it definitely hasn't sold as much as the rest of the we're going to have to get these out just to get ideas because yeah yeah so

everyone like go and slack I I'll I guess I'll post the categories and maybe or do like some sort of Google survey and ask people to submit nominees because I think we're struggling a little bit on that one and I love that category most questionable move Netflix games they may get a repeat on this one right oh my God oh my God when did the G oh the GTA thing happened last year no the oh well I well this year was the GTA listing right correct yeah okay right we we weren't aware of it yeah so maybe they can be nominated twice in a row oh well speaking of this so squid Games 2 season two comes came out last night I think it came out midnight Pacific time for on Christmas day did you hear that there's some sort of like interaction between the mobile game and the show there's supposed to be something where there's codes or some sort of interaction I thought that could be cool whatever that ends up being crash you're

always like what could they possibly do differently that nobody else could do to save them not that it's gonna save them but I'm interested to see if that's cool or not although I'm reading reviews that the game is not that great oh cuz it's like fall guys with and it's not like thematically yeah kind of kind of that type of thing most brilliant move oh interesting Lego and fortnite I think I pushed for this a lot I thought that that would really extend the franchise for fortnite take it younger Sony taking 10% of the from software owner is that g to go that feels like a one of the great moves of the Year this year that was a really good move and they're at the height yeah that's smart crushed it was Monopoly go the gift that keeps on giving Call of Duty has to be the hero this year Infinity Nikki oh stop how's how's there's no way we were getting out of this podcast

without him mentioning that [ __ ] dude get out of town dude I was thinking of you I'm like oh my God I am becoming a perv I gotta delete this thing immediately right what a [ __ ] pervy game that is oh my Lord all right no that would not be in the crushed it category I I think you got to put Pokemon in oh Pokemon TCG to too much money too quickly in the end I mean how's it doing is it still crushing it so remember we were talking about last week they ran their first live Ops event which is I think it was a nday event and they had a revenue Spike which is the highest they've had but it's very close to where they were at the beginning of the year and their downloads also had an uptick so it' be interesting to see whether or not there's any hangover effect from this liveops event we were seeing very small declines week over- we in downloads and some softness and revenue so we'll see how it does in 2025 I don't think it's going to do a billion but I'm very curious to see this one I

bet dungeon and fighter mobile is going to deserve this crushed it award true it's it's on the decline it's been on a hug but it's already done 800 over 800 million in China true China only very localized I think that's fair I would very happy with $800 million yeah I want to coin the the term so we have shark fin I think we need stegosaurus you got nice little curve up comes down a little bit got a little bit on the tail little spikes on the tail let's see what happens at the end here because it looks like it had that initial curve did really well for Revenue it might be the first tail Spike going back to Pokemon TCG they probably just need to figure out liveops yeah no no if they actually have a good liveops calendar of introducing new characters and changing meta I don't know you know like doing what these things do they could get keep this going for a long time yeah Mak sense our last category was the worst layoff which embracer also won I think I'm

going to win this after getting fired for being on this podcast this is a terrible category I don't even know that's yeah that sounds like a very Mishka category yeah maybe like the worst business move oh no we have most questionable move all right we might have to rethink that one but actually the layoffs were not nearly as bad this year as they were last year right well I don't know if you remember January of 24 was I think there were more more layoffs in January of 24 than all of 23 if I remember that stat correctly and then Microsoft had like two rounds of layoffs where they did January and then again in like I don't know March April May or something like that I had a lot of friends who were on Call of Duty mobile war zone remember rip war zone oh that that flamed out so fast We we forgot about it I know so I yeah I I knew a lot of people at at you know Activision mobile and and blizzard

folks and act and Microsoft folks who got let go so there were a lot there but there were there were tons of com tons of companies with layoffs might be difficult to pick one anyway so those are the nine categories of last year's golden Twigs we'll think about posting those and getting you know people can submit their nominees that'd be super helpful for us or or new categories what are we all looking forward to in 2025 five well I mean I I I'll say something on this one so I I mean this year has been really terrible right like it's just you know tons of layoffs you know the Venture communities like running for cover out of gaming companies kind of pulling back on Acquisitions and IPO Market is shut down like in general like this like really low sentiment for gaming overall like from the investment community and all that stuff it's just as bad as it gets and this kind of typically happens like in these Cycles that happened 2208 but behind that though things are

actually not that bad right mobile is up like high single digits this year and is likely going to be up maybe half half of that next year actually console PC is actually relatively stable for not a big year for releases so that's not bad at all and then the IPO Market's coming back not for gaming but definitely for other categories so it's tough to be the critic or the cynic in a market that's so shitty because everyone thinks thinks you're just [ __ ] being mean right you know like you're just punching when they're down so I've got a lot of feedback this year about that being too mean but what I will say is that next year is going to be a [ __ ] ton better right oh yeah I mean there's two things right switch to and GTA 6 yeah except that mobile didn't have any big releases this year so mobile might be a little bit struggling to grow compared to last year given you know Monopoly go and last war and all those other games that did well but yeah I think they should be up like small singles at the mobile and then console yeah and with between

switch 2 and GTA they should be up both hardware and software maybe even double digits right so like I think people will start to feel like things are coming back and they're getting the wind is at the back type thing and like we won't see as many layoffs at all I don't think next year we'll see some failures of some of these Venture backback companies that never made sense to begin with but I think it'll be feel I think a lot more positive and the message for me is not going to be any different I'm still going to be critical I'm still going to be cynical so like that ain't changing but in the environment that we're in it might be received a bit better right in theory right so I'm I'm excited for 2025 how about that in my cynical okay yeah I I had read some rumors that they might announce the switch to date in January that they're they said that they're going to announce the switch to by the end of March yeah so January would make sense they want I as I've said many times I think

generally they want not announced before the holiday so they can cor still sell switch right and so it makes sense to announce in January and then hopefully they have pricing and probably not pricing but definitely hopefully release timing yeah there's a little bit of rumors around a lot of the accessories are are are kind of being shown you know the cases or the controllers and so we're getting close to that being a major thing and then think we'll ever see Laura again because she's going to get her switch to and play every Nintendo game imaginable I was waiting for them to come out with more more of those so I started playing brothership which was released recently it was not I mean it's interesting but aside from the tears of the Kingdom Echoes of wisdom I liked wonder I'm waiting for more content and I I'm hoping they they wait they're they're basically saving it and then they're just going to throw it all at us here's a switch to here's a great new Mario game here's another Zelda game

for you it's felt a little bit like a drought oh hello hello Phil is that a landline you actually have a landline what the [ __ ] is that I haven't heard that for like a decade that's right Phil I think you're in North Carolina right yeah I'm right by epic games you're backstage side dude nice say hello to Tim I grew up by there by the way epic games do something with kry Crossroads godamn it you promised you were going to do something when you bought the property and you've done nothing supposed to be a public private partnership give me my parks and Tennis carry Crossroads it was a really shitty mall they bought they were going to renovate everything they've done nothing with like a100 million office complex yep and then Co hit remote work all that stuff but let go of the lease sell it I mean they they bought it outright which is very strange I didn't know they want to become a real estate company but do something with the property damn it it's like Zinga you remember when Zinga owned

the San Francisco property and that was like the biggest like asset that they had in their entire when the stock was at 250 was like half their half their market value was in the [ __ ] property was a lovely that's where that's where I work lovely property now they're in Sano which is by a Whole Foods not nearly as sexy as it used to be but Ethan while we had you I needed to ask you about all the handheld news I know how you love your handhelds and so there's all the rumors what tell me how are you feeling about the handheld news I mean just the steam deck is so good the ux on it is so great that like buying a more expensive thing but that forces me to go through Windows 10 or Windows 11 on my handheld like I not really interested I got AR glasses that you click in and it's like you're playing on 130in screen it is awesome I played this game d keeper for an hour last night I played armored Court 6 on my steam deck laying down in

bed with these AR glasses that make it feel like I'm on a giant screen it's amazing I love it I didn't even know you could do this you live in the world of Niche yeah you don't live in the real world Ethan but how much how much of the steam Revenue do you think steam deck is driving no idea 1% no I think the attach rate on Steam deck owners is ridiculous it it's always number one in the steam top selling charts the top grossing charts yeah I think it's actually making quite a bit of money for valve I mean as a share of company Revenue I mean it's probably not I be interesting to see if it was making more than DOTA C certainly not more than the you guys are out of your [ __ ] minds what are we talking about like dude you don't sell Hardware profitably right like it's it's not a profitable Enterprise compared to DOTA not not talking about profitability just talking about gross revenue revenue get out of your minds just stop my spending in the past two years has shifted from PS5 and mobile to steam de

it's all I spend money on games wise so like by selling me something that I love they recaptured like $2,000 a year oh god oh man all Al on Armored Court did you watch Ethan the secret level no I haven't watched secret level yet right all right well yeah we've been at this an hour completely unscripted felt felt good any anyone want to say any happy Holidays happy end of 24 before we're out uh as since we celebrate both in my in my household merry Christmas happy Hanukkah have a great restful New Year everybody don't drink and drive keep the ARP pumping wait let's look forward to next year I think next year will be a lot better for everybody so let's let's exciting happy [ __ ] New Year to uh the game space happy [ __ ] New Year don't drink and drive all right happy

[ __ ] New Year guys what a pleasure to talk to you every week and I just am thankful that I get a chance to be on a podcast with other smart people who make me smarter so thank you guys and see you next year you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if You' subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice those stars and likes while a small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com SLS slack and apply to join Jo the games industry best professional Community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fun content creators thanks for listening a