Webshops, IP In AI, And Avoiding Apple’s Commission Fees: The Full PGC London Wrap-Up

[Music] hello world welcome world all of you all there's so many people in here but all 7,000 welcome to pg. Biz yes and you know what we are going to be coming out more and more you're going to hear more about it because we've been like Grassroots this organic growth and it's just it's just through the roof I don't know if you check the numbers it's like you know eight I know 89,000 subscribers it's going well just because it's cool and we have it weekly and now we have it live so this is the big deal and um yeah it's just about the show because we're drawing a line under it just closing it now and 10 years on top of that and you've been out there you've been the eyes and the ears of everyone who couldn't visit the tracks couldn't talk to the cool people that wasn't doing what you were doing for example Chris chatting up in the VIP room talking to I

wasn't chatting up anyone the VIP not chatting up a is not Bri no you were talking to cool people and I let my wife see this I've been all sorts of trouble I was just talking to people well that's natural Chris so um we know what you do let's talk about what left massive impression you know something from the show we'll start with that moment and then we'll get through some themes and some Trends but like you know something had to have been like the wow moment it's well a wow moment I mean there's been so many great things the thing I want to say uh for people that unfortunately couldn't attend the the show the energy I know there's a lot of negativity at the moment in the industry um for for you know for for sound reasons a lot of people losing losing their their jobs and I I I do that isn't great right no one wants that to happen um and you know the industry feels like been a little bit flat or you know we're struggling a little bit postco but the positivity in the energy on the on the floors and in the tracks last two days has been incredible you know OB see this

you know not everybody's going oh the future's incredible but generally the spirit and energy here makes me feel we're going to be just fine right like there's so many talented people out there listening to their Visions from everything from like you know improving their their monetization and their kind of you know the advertising through to whole new platforms and and Technologies they're adopting it I always find inspiring I don't get to listen to as many tracks as I'd like but uh I I felt kind of rejuvenated for an old man an old man has been made very happy that's good so I don't know what that means but I'm yeah this is my 10th year of doing this I'm going to be 50 this year that's almost as old as Craig so almost I kind of the same thing it's really interesting just hearing everyone just the different ways they're trying to tackle the challenges that are going on but there's always you know well right now particularly a lot of challenges but they're they're always there they've always been there so there's always something new to overcome um I think one of my one of my favorite moments was the the brightest

Britain panel where we had some like an amazing panel with the CEO of Trail Mix the CEO of triple dot Ian Livingstone was on it uh Paul Paul G Paul go kind of turned up about 10 minutes before after his uh his flight from Manchester didn't get blown over but he he's ex of um play demic but now fourth star brand new exclusive interview with you I believe on exclusive interview thanks very much thanks very much to Paul for that yeah he technically his and Alex's well it is their fourth studio so no no prizes for guessing guessing how they got that name uh but he uh one of my favorite bits is in his 10 minutes that he got onto the stage blessing that he made it he uh he was saying that uh and he said the same thing in the interview that I was like why launch the studio now it's you know it's such a tough time like why do it now and he said while doing it for 25 years and to be honest

I've always been told now oh don't do it now now is a really bad time to launch a new studio so like you you have to do it at some point but I think that comes from he's seen all the Cycles he knows like you can make a success and uh if you really if you look over the last year we have seen some big successes it's been really tough you know obviously there's been lots of layoffs that we'll discuss but there've been huge successes uh Monopoly go done super amazingly well obviously big I and then you get one we had one of the fathers today of scope Le was in was very good as well he was brilliant told us all about how he could just kept stuffing ads into yatsi we just kept making money I was I was I was like what you to saying yeah it's all that player experience we just put an ad in and we put another ad in and we just we kept making more money it's like okay that's good so I like put more ads in that's what that's what players want it's more ads I learned that that's I like how he said like they fundamentally sort of changed how yatsi is by I think adding in an extra and but players seem to like really love that so that was really

interesting but yeah like I think there's a lot of positivity still out there they adapt they adapt the gaml we look we look forward I missed it but I would have loved to have heard the one where it was you know going back into the into the history of games and trying to find older games and bring them back and people were like saying hey attend that one because you know what get some great ideas you know look at Monopoly look at everything else Aaron Aaron you are on the staff now I knew you were freelancing before but um now you're here and You' been out there what was your experience so I've been around to a lot of the talks over the past two days um written up about quite a few of them so be sure to check out the website nice plug nice plug yeah shamess plug but we love it uh so I think one of the most interesting ones I've seen was um from the ux writer at King there was a really interesting sort of behind the scenes um of the whole ux system and process of basically

optimizing the kind of language that's used around the iconography in the game to kind of make players either keep playing more or do different things or watch adverts like there were different um iterations of trying to encourage people to watch ads and then some statistics on like you know when we said you know free items you know click click here and it has a little like movie symbol that had much better returns than just like watch ad as an option watch ad who who knew it is all who would have thought it's all about the detail right and that that is especially mobile small changes can have such a huge effect and I know it's not very sexy talking about how I've optimized my ads but but actually that is part of the business right is is is making that Revenue I don't know if anybody saw else saw uh was one of our sponsors and I'm forget the name it's very bad who she was they were talking about I'm going to check this cuz I'm don't worry it's not live

we can edit it's not live we can edit we can do this in post uh no it's not live oh what was it was it was I saw it ear it was brilliant it was uh social Peta social Peta had a talk and they were showing loads of these really kind of quite crazy ads some of which looked I I it was but they were showing how ads are now games themselves right they're kind of like mini games in themselves and they're really really more almost as much work is going into kind of the ad creative as is into the actual creation of the of some of the game levels which and and you know it was kind of fascinating I mean I know obviously advertising I'm not you know I'm not not naive to think people don't spend fortunes and advertising for other products but yeah the sophistication of of the possibilities really really fascinating I thought it's actually I think that's one of the big trends right now I mean obviously it's been going on for a long time but just approaches to creatives cuz more important than ever when user acquisition is as challenging as it's ever been you got to get your creatives right and then the iterative

process that goes into that you know I've spoken with a few Publishers and so they're they're doing it like weekly just constant different creatives and they're planning ahead like a year ahead making sure they've done their testing know which one's going to work the best yeah a tremendous amount of work goes into that side of things and tremendous amount of AI That's why you had these tracks that were standing room only I mean the AI ones that I was in yesterday fantastic and all of it about the creative and the game but um some incredible things going on there it is amazing that everyone's adopted AI now like our AI sessions so far have been over the last year as you say always ramped everyone's fascinated and but we're having to move now from being AI is interesting you can maybe do this to really detail here's how you use achieve this in there but everyone's using it like everyone's we haven't managed to replace in at all staff yet but that will come you're try but everyone it's it's amazing it's it's not amazing that

the mobile the very clever game developers are adopting Technologies but the scale to which everyone's using this one way or another is I don't know I I I find it impressive and also slightly terrifying I don't know but uh what do you think I find it yeah kind of the same kind of both I I uh I think some AI technology is is super impressive and I think the point that gets made a lot is like it or hate it you probably have to at least learn it uh some of the tools because maybe in a few years we don't know but maybe in a few years that will be kind of become critical to your role and someone else is going to know it so you kind of have to know it yeah I don't think you can afford you don't have to embed it in all your game and all all your processes but you can't afford not to stay up with it and understand it and watch how it could be used because it is just you know you're saying about creatives if someone's going to create 40 or 100 times more creatives in a second then then you've got a whole team working on you need to don't have to sack your team but you need to be aware that that's how that works whether you can use that as well right it's not just

the productivity it was Gus from cosmic Lounge mindblowing that it wasn't the productivity it was the process so it's the idea that AI will optimize a creative but it will also put it into sort of like a loop where if you do it properly and he is doing it like this then you give the audience data back to chat gbt and then what you have is you have automatically and forever optimizing and iterating in a loop and that is pretty cool what could possibly go wrong and then then they come then what can go yeah what can go wrong it's got to be and then the nuclear bombs fall and that's that's the end and then and then you take that right and then you make the game from it as well so it's just like you know at some point I don't know the company of one but this is sounding like that well one one thing I I will say about AI that I really don't like is I think like sometimes they have to base I forget was it now but uh the base like how it learns on stuff that a company owns and so the stuff that's created is you know they

they own the copyright of that I really hate you got the these amazing jry AI tools uh but some of them they're based on copyrighted work and I cannot believe that that is currently allowed yeah we talking about that what you're going to have to do that was in one of that really cool Track by the way about what's this is this going to look like legally and the whole idea was you will have to tell what were your prompts and you will have to talk about the data set so the whole idea was you know get really excited about it experiment get in there but try to own your data set and keep your prompts that's going to be like your IP because if the content was out there then what you did with it is your IP yeah so it goes I mean a different way unequivocally going to be some serious legal you know activity and Suits going around AI created content it's it's inevitable it's just it's as usual it's kind of the law catching up and you know know there lawyers sh sharpening their pencils everywhere

getting prepared for this the lawyers always win right the lawyers and accountants always win so the lawyers the lawyers they've not been aied out yet they will at some point I guess but right but they are there's going to be stuff happening already uh talking this is not really from our show but I I have I want to talk about this so I'm going so as everybody following the power world thing right so power world is this game is it power world I think it's called power world so it's like it's how can you describe it as being Pokemon with guns without saying that okay it's guns it's kind of Pokemon with guns that's how they that's how it's sort of described it's literally an elector bar with like a rail guard or it's Pokemon with guns it's kind of come from kind of nowhere apparently blown up on Steam to be the records like concurrent players or whatever insane like shifted 4 million copies or something and and it is Pokemon so the the the there's this whole thing going online at the moment this is not mobile maybe it's mobile but it's it's it's fascinating the legal thing makes me think of that that case

is going to be that's we're going to be hearing about how amazing this is and then in two weeks time it's going to be hearing about how it's all been shut down again because Nintendo have good lawyers and they are not going to take that well luckily Nintendo isn't very litigious about these notoriously relaxed about it alongside Disney they were fine I well I haven't played it I I've seen a lot of games it looks great I definitely want to play it before it get play it before it gets shut down that's my without the guns like where is this game where is this ver version of Pokémon like it's not there that's like Nintendo is to be fair they are different the characters before we get sued they are different and I'm sure maybe they're not based but they do look similar and a lot of people have pointed out online that the models underneath look uncanon andly similar in proportions and stuff so I don't know but the the reason I I mentioned that is apart from the fact that it's all buzzing up with my feed at the moment is is that kind of feeds into the AI stuff for me and how AI the creation of new things and who and the ownership of Ip

as as you mentioned is that I don't know how much it was raised I didn't I didn't get to attend all the a talks I Wasing couple other tracks but I I I imagine that will be increasingly a conversation point if it isn't already yeah it came up quite a lot through the talks without really any solution but no no no solution just great debate just carry on I think that's the solution is it making them don't worry about it another thing that was like incredible success I mean wasn't expecting this web stores web shops web shop web shops shopop weop I mean we're chat we were chatting about this Craig it was like I I get this at one level it's like yes it's empowerment I control the merchandising I control the experience but then we're thinking about this like how are developers going to do this how many partners you know all these different things the payments what were you picking up on Craig I know that this was something that you were like also yes web shops and track next

time for sure right just on at San Francisco like four web shop tracks that's just an entire web shop web shop connects web shop connect you heard it right yeah but it's cut me off by by surprise I I uh you know like I I was saying earlier I was speaking to app charge and I was like do you know what a couple years ago well a couple years ago quite a few years ago you know when there were some payments companies I wasn't really that interested in doing of those interviews it's like many years ago when I was last at pocket gamiz cut to now 2023 you've just seen a real rise in Publishers and they now in some ways it flies under the radar but kind of everyone knows about it but it's just not been spoken about a lot and you see but you see in financials you know companies start to make 20 30% of their revenue just from their from their web stores and they and they're all doing it obviously just to get away from the clutches of Apple Google yeah I mean it's two it's two things it's one it's money it's at the moment it's additional Revenue like why would you not you're leaving money if you haven't got web shop you're basically leaving money on

the on the table right and the other thing is exactly that is that that you know the people there's been a lot of difference and respect and and and you know there is there is kind of good will to point towards the platforms and the shops you know Apple built an ecosystem it's it's their right to declare the rules but I have not heard for some time the the open sort of Revolt people you know you shab out in a bar but not on St where people go look well why this just isn't right why and this is like big game developers saying Apple AR you know they don't do enough to be charging 30% at the moment they built the ecosystem they've got to support I get that but they're mainly a payment provider for most people so payment providers don't charge 30% right so yeah well that's not what they say anymore that was the case and then now they go oh it's a platform fee it's a platform fee and apparently the the payment is worth 3% of them oh that's true as you know it's 27% platform Fe and I I get if you're from Apple I totally understand

you know where you're coming from you've invested a large amount into build this and you invest into lots of things but got it back but there's a lot but the developers are you know the natives are restless there's one thing definitely a trend from this event time and time again this came up and it wasn't just people being annoyed about adfa which they still are and all that stuff but now they're also annoyed about you know the commission and and I think you know the web shops has seen as a way to just get out that and have that direct relationship and owning the customer going back to IP and ownership owning the customer was a big thing that came out two or three times like who owns a customer and developers think they own their customers and maybe they're right I don't know well we were talking about earlier I was saying you know it's actually uh in a way it's encouraging developers to look build and look after their communities more and obviously take them out of the store and put them on Discord or where wherever they're going to put their communities their website I don't know and then from there that's where take them to the web store or or from there you can take them

and do other stuff I I don't know direct contact with your with your consumers a really good benefit of of web stores not just you earn a lot of money have you has anybody here actually used a web store yet I realized I haven't I looked I was thinking that going yeah this webs brilliant think I actually I mean I've used I've bought things on the web right I've Amazon's quite popular these days um but I should why are we not doing this eron did you hear people talking about anyone tried it anybody is excited about uh the yeah um I've definitely heard people talk about it but um I haven't tried them out either we have to do it we all have to everybody everybody get a game I mean most so many developers have got I mean scopely made a lot of money of of that one mini clip made a lot of money that way super all the big guys are doing it but that yeah so we AI web shops yeah what else before before we move on I have one thing question for people no one I've spoken to knows the answer

so obviously Apple epic had a win for about two hours and then Apple that was kind of cool it was like get we won and then it's like no you I heard the champagne balls pop from the payments companies and then then they just put it back in again the what the C then Sly a million voices just cried out and then it was silence yeah yeah but uh so Apple's now going to charge you 27% and I believe the rule is that okay you link away obviously then there's a horrible message that comes up and if that user spends within 7 days on that web shop uh Apple charges 27% but my question is does does Apple own that user indefinitely so forever with that game that publisher do they own their user so what happens after a month two weeks or a month that same user makes another purchase on that web store it's good good question and how do they track that like I know you can obvious have tracking links but like tracking links

get subsumed by the links and and presumably Apple would then have to demand to to be absolutely confident they'd have to kind of audit the web store cuz how would they know cuz once it's gone outside the ecosystem they don't necessarily know so but then also does anybody know the answer to this because we don't know that no I don't no one start it through no one start also to track that it's not very it's not very privacy Centric yeah I was going to say but was privacy is the main concern oh yeah of course yeah sorry it wasn't privacy and and and brand you know is are we going to are we going to go off or are they going to send some sort of like you know warning you're leaving the confines of the secure App Store where everything is checked who knows but another topic that came up a lot which was surprising because a couple years ago it was like yeah but it's a non-gaming thing it's a non-gaming thing subscription models I'm hearing a bit of a comeback maybe it's just that that search for other models to figure it out because it's all about diversity ification anyway I mean diversify was the word was the motto um

subscription models I heard about it what did you hear about uh Craig I uh I think there's uh a slight cown from thinking this is going to be like the future and now I think forget it's not so sure I guess we're not really talking about mobile here though for subscriptions for that if it's like a Netflix service it's most likely that's for like console PC but I don't necessarily see as the future now I think that TV and film streaming companies have struggled a bit now especially now like money's not as easy to come by and that's what they've kind of lived on to scale uh so I think there's a struggle there and now you're just seeing them do what TV is always done which is put ads in or bundle it and and and now it's just sort of turning into normal television yeah May doesn't work that is fascinating they're kind of turning back to all those things where you could binge it and there it's all serialized weekly at a certain time released it's like yeah we've done that before that's

that's what we used to have with ads on it but yeah yeah I didn't I didn't hear much descriptions this this this time I didn't hear as much about it but I I I you know is still it's still people are you know alternative Revenue models right that's what people are looking for different ways a they want more money and B they want to be outside the control of the App Store favorite talk so I'm taking over because I've got game five minut so I've got i' I've got close I've got a bit thing results I've got announced I was okay excited so what was your favorite Peggy when you seen lot what was your favorite think Peggy what was your favorite uh either talk or or topic oh I have to say I was I was hanging out in the AI track first day I was like nailed I was I was there because it's also about using the data that you have so I was talking to a lot of people and they're like yeah you know I've got first party data if I hook this up with AI if I optimize it if I can automate it you know I'm going to be just like a not maybe an ad network but I'm going to have have an edge here and

I'm going to be able to do this inhouse it was like this wasn't just the dream anymore of the larger companies this was like you know coming down to some mid companies because data matters right so for me it was Ai and the data okay AI and data AI data what's your favorite Aaron what did you what did you really come away um so another AI one I really liked I think it was corite games started off yesterday so um you know first thing in the morning you know Monday morning not everyone's favorite time of day um 6 a.m. session Everyone likes it um but so went into you know sat down got ready got set up um and so it was a talk about Ai and the whole um presentation was made using AI there were over 200 slides and it was all like AI generated stuff so really kind of set the tone and um they had an AI generated song about PGC oh oh wow oh nice it's like maroke over again like wow I I want

now I'm going to have to go and watch the video all will be available in the uh for people that attended in the video volume in a couple weeks I'm now I'm now obsessed that that's good okay was it a good song yeah really what was it about uh it was like a modern pop yeah us give us a couple of bars it was a fale vocalist I can't good good cop out that was good that's a female vocalist okay do that one so what's your favorite Craig I kind of said I still loved the brightest Britain panel because we we had just you know what's the word CR Creme of the of the of the UK games industry they're all giving really good advice and just kind of T their experiences that they've been through and that yeah things are tough now but you know things can get better and I think with that one thing I want to say earlier is that often the the biggest most successful strongest companies are launched in a recession or a downturn like obviously one of the

things the flip side of unfortunately people losing their their roles at the moment is that there's an incredible amount of talent um there's going to be a lot of new startups coming out because people you know AR going to sit on the hands forever people don't tend to leave the games industry if they can possibly help it like it's not people might they might pop away to something else and come back so I I I think in some ways there's probably not a a time to start something new because you know people's expectations bow yeah raising money going to going to be kind of tougher that's the one thing but if you can do something without needing you know a fortune if you can do it on Angel Investments early or just bootstrap it I think it's not a terrible time so I yeah I think the positivity like you said was good I I I saw three things I thought were brilliant and one was um I love data so I whenever some like a DAT on U talk I love love it because I always use that stuff all the time and and they both they both talk and they both kind of uh delivered data I I kind of um Dropped In some some really interesting numbers and and talk good news they had

they had good news they basically said the industry grew they said that the the mobile games industry did grow the only reason their overall numbers didn't grow was because of China everywhere China was down like 10% but would take China out and the whole thing was at 4% right so that that was positive and they had loads of good tracks so they've got a report I'm sure to check out it's always full of great stuff the interesting newu came on and they kind of a little bit more well our numbers probably about right but maybe a bit lower overall but they did say um they had a really good talk about going from using mobile IP into PC which kind of sounds like kind of negative but actually the whole crossplatform thinking that that stuff is was really kind of got me thinking that I was thinking oh that's not very positive is it why Leaving Mobile but it's not necessarily about leaving mobile it's about going I can still build my brand my game here but I can also monetize it in a different way or in a different place and that that was really interesting that's a good good talk and what's the other thing I saw can remember now thing I the scopy guy I I thought that was brilliant he was you

know it's not often you have like a probable billionaire in the room next to you he probably isn't billi but they sold it for 5 billion I I don't reckon he's hard up but he was he had a kind of a saintly glow about him of someone who just knew what he was doing and his new business of helping games company seems pretty smart but yeah he was he was really interesting talking a bit about uh y see he couldn't say much about Monopoly go which I'm is everybody else playing Monopoly go I all this interactions any hands playing Monopoly go we got people everybody yeah everybody why why are we playing it it's so stupid but I can't stop playing it it's just so stupid it feels so when you roll the dice is just it's so good and so bad it's like I'm going around so I can get the stickers which you can never get you got I'm going to Facebook I'm posting I'm a 409y old man going to Facebook going can I trade this little picture of a dog for a little picture it's insane it's incredible but it's so it's so good but so bad but um but yeah yeah I I I yeah that that was fascinating getting Insight from those people and we have

some really high caliber people here so so that was really cool um sorry I'm keep looking at my watch no no we don't have a watch we don't have a clock but we have to end it by looking to the next one Chris I mean this is this is a hard one to top what is next we've got a lot going on we're doing enough one we're doing a ton we've got about seven more this year I know we actually did PL through S last year now we're San Francisco next so you're going out for GDC week our GDC adjacent not our Phil or G event starting is on Monday Tuesday of GC week that's going to be good that's already getting really good uh sign up so we're happy with that um then we're in Dubai at start of uh May which is a much better time to go to Dubai the mid June where we went last year when it was a little bit too hot um but that's brilliant actually the Middle East uh that was another thing that came out some of the data the Middle East is the fastest growing part of the games industry it's kind of a much I wouldn't say it's a blue ocean but it's a much sort of much less Scarlet Ocean than some of the other other worlds there there's gen opportunity there and I I

think if you're not already looking at the Middle East you should go to our show or take a visit and just have a get your head around it because there is that's a very young population very fast growing in terms of gaming population and and there's a lot of money out there as well uh and then we'll be doing the mobile games Awards in games come this year uh move going to make it bigger it's going to be a dinner it's cool and then we've got PGC Helsinki end of September start of October yeah and then we've got and Saudi Arabia to fit in and maybe another one but I'm not allowed to talk about it oh oh so we'll have seven or eight it'll be fine but so you you you can go to you can go to PGC everywhere that we one in your house at some point AI at oh I mean you did try that to be fair we did we did do a p CHR Chris we're we're going to make it a thing we're going to do this at everyone come on there's got to be a way to fit it in we got to have it cool with the whole team with a greetings to Charlie and to Daniel and everyone else who's out there working at the end bring them all together together here yeah y we're

going to do it again but thank you for just a bit of an impromptu thing we we lost a couple of speakers we thought we'd try and fill a space so um we are going to we're going to going to bid you farewell to this I don't know how did you wrap up the podcast Tuesday i't been on it twice you're coming back yeah but how' you wrap it up how' you wrap up not not the whole series oh come on I don't want to wrap it up the way we really do it cuz then we say before we leave we have to ask your favorite game of all time okay so we're not going to are we going to do that oh what the hell yours I probably no I'll like go my favorite game of all time incredbly difficult question alien isolation is the best game I've ever played SB soccer probably that's really dating me I just love very determin here in come on Aon I'll go with Zenna Blade Chronicles 3 it's very specific three the third version it's always the best right we've done it cool i' I've got to go and announce things so thank you very much for staying here and listening to us our audience here hey thanks so much

live sorry this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platform so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian

said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm pegan saltz and that's the wrap until next week a