Week in Mobile Games E34 - Subscription without upsell is death! And IDFA changes are good now?

hello and welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights I'm Craig Chapel head of content at pocketgamer.biz and we have a special guest this week a fundamentally game CEO Oscar Clark is back welcome back how you doing I'm all right I'm all right I I have a I have a pocket g a title too you know contributing editor would you believe I mean obviously you know it's a very fast score because I don't I don't contribute much apart from turn up at conferences and uh an occasional podcasts and say hello and and Shout opinions but that's basically what I do generally anyway you always have Lo valuable insights and and then at the shows you uh you run like the track rooms and yeah yeah loads loads of stuff for us well you basically saying is I'm old and I always have an opinion so [Laughter]

uh so what so what are you up to at the moment you're in uh you're in posan I'm literally in posan so um in posan here in Poland uh they have a event called GIC uh major event and it's a consumer and trade show uh it's been running for many years uh before Co they were having up to like 70,000 people attending so we're talking about a a conference that's you know maybe kind of getting close to the sort of Gamescom kind of scale in terms of audience um not necessarily as well known as uh as many of them but an incredible uh space and they making a really amazing effort to make sure that you get incredible speakers I was just um a few you know few minutes ago I was atting a a round table talking about uh how to remove uncertainty in game design which made me very happy I love chatting about that and obviously um trying to throw in my own Frameworks and Concepts into that as well which is always fun sounds awesome the I've actually been to I've been there years before I said that I can't remember what it was though I want to say about 2018 yeah Ohad what I find

really interesting about Poland in general and we'll probably get to this later I mean there are certain communities where there's standout qualities and when I first came to Poland and it's probably 2014 maybe 2013 uh something like that when um the game super hot first came out they it was like the very earliest time they were showing off I mean this the actual date would be whatever the year it was that they first started showing the game off um but it was just one of about half a dozen games where the developers had managed to not just do the kind of usual thing of making the game that they used to play and try to make that for themselves it wasn't like that which you see usually when you go to a place that hasn't got necessarily the Deep Heritage of development instead they were doing these clever things so each game had some little clever twist to deal with a constraint and you know it always makes me smile when I see somebody is going not just to make the same games but to actually try to think about how to bring

something new to it and I've always found polish developers being really good at that yeah yeah I remember seeing a lot that what the at the time there was the one game 10 10 seconds until you 60 seconds to uh I'm again or something that's it that was it it was quite stressful yeah it's like you in that particular game if someone I'm thinking of you got to rush around the house to pick up the things that you're going to need in order to survive and to make sure you get all of the people into the uh survival shelter and then you see how long you survive based on the 60 seconds you had to collect things I uh I the first run through of that I did I I was just sort of thrown into it and then uh I got the stuff went into the shelter I realized I didn't take any of the family so my my character just instantly went bad yeah but this is what I think this is exactly the same this is the same kind of period not quite the same

but pretty much same period again this is an example of where someone has not just tried to recreate a story or or a platform or Mario game or whatever to try to bring something creatively to the piece now is that going to become the next billion dollar game probably not but will it Inspire developers who are making some part of the next billion dollar game uh to do something a little bit more interesting a little bit more intriguing that captures the imagination of a player and and that's kind of where I I kind of feel happiest in my design ahead which is I don't necess expect everyone to come up with avangard ideas but I think when we can look at these avard ideas and think how we can make them more accessible by understanding why they work then we make better games yeah for sure so before we jump into the to the week's news uh just the usual few shout outs so we've got uh don't forget we released the top 50 Bobo game maker check out the link in the description

we've got Pocket Gamer connect Jordan coming up on November 9th and 10th and we've got Pocket Gamer connects London returning our biggest show of the year on January 20th to 21st right so uh we're going to run through the news so first up uh going to talk about Netflix yes again I think we talk about them quite a lot on this show I'll run through the story quick so Netflix's internal Studio team blue has been closed down 2 years after forming that was according to a report from game file it's California Studio established in October 2022 with OverWatch executive producer chako sunny at the helm La Bo in the likes of Halo creatively Joseph Staten and God of War art director Raphael cretti to create games for for the I guess their Subscription Service uh it was believed to be to form part of a plan to take its game ambitions Beyond mobile and it was

kind of referred to as a brad AAA multiplatform game and original Ip I think I read that so console game and that it was going to be a shooter which makes sense I guess with the people that they brought in uh o OverWatch and Halo uh a Netflix spokesperson confirmed it uh that the studio now Clos and those fre key highs they've actually all left it's not clear how many Star are impacted by the decision to some a team but game file did note a report from Business Insider uh that their new president Alain tascan recently recruited another epic games VP uh the St of game development Jeep shro as it's as Netflix's VP of game technology and portfolio development uh Netflix reportedly recently cut 35 Staff of his team uh including from Team blue uh though game file said that number was likely lower which uh I don't know if I just misunderstood because I would have

thought it would actually be quite a big team um so maybe maybe I'm SL slightly misunderstanding I thought it' be quite a big team working on a conso triaa shooter uh maybe it's early development but uh interesting anyway interesting I guess what that means for Netflix going forward I guess it means that the new president is actually enacting some changes you assume that those are his decisions not from the co-ceos um and maybe now they'll focus on which I think sounded like their plan largely to focus on like the the mass IPS that they already own and we we interviewed lean Loom earlier this year and she one of the things that she was saying is that kind of the interesting thing I thought for that discussion was how things work both ways so they OB do Netflix stories as one example working with IPS and one it engages kind of the fans of those TV shows further into a game but then also she was saying that

actually they can get new users that maybe just want to play I guess an interactive fiction game or whatever genre and then they might then go and watch the TV show or movie that logic makes sense but I I I think that the and again so we we pitched Netflix Game a while back and the impression I got was that there's so much uh I mean again I might be wrong but my impression was that there's so many barriers to get in the way of that logical uh Jos so you know you've got the contractual issue you've got the cost of the IP issue you've got the complexity of making a game you complexity of aligning the audience expectation in play with the audience expectation of watching an experience like that so what I'm trying to say is that I'm a massive believer in driving IP using multiple media elements I think you know there's an amazing opportunity there but every time I kind of like come

even close to getting involved in that and and none none of them have worked out every time I got close to involved in that it's always been the lead media has to be dominant it has to be dominant um now so that means when you've got a TV show or a film um you cannot effectively create rules mechanics narrative arcs Etc that can impinge on that original media you have to be very very careful of it so that creates some massive constraints but also who owns that IP and there's a lot of ambiguity in IP ownership I mean one of my um my my heartbreaks in this world is that one of my favorite kind of like 1970s 80s um uh fantasy films Hawk the Slayer which is owned by the Kingsley uh can't be made because some of the IP isn't owned by and and and you

know this is my understanding I don't don't quote me apologies Jason Chris you know if if I made a mistake on that but that's my understanding and but what an amazing IP and surely that needs to be re you know imagined with the type technology we have and all the potential it has um and but that's just an example you know and even you know again let's take you know Rebellion as a as a as a an example there is a team that produced one of the best science sence fiction films I in 3D that we've ever had dread amazing film it didn't do well in the box office I don't understand why because it was actually genuinely fantastic and um you know I I genuinely think it was one of my favorite films um there's there's spectacularly done and works really well with the comic and potentially with games you can see that working that is where the team owned thep

entirely so if you're in Netflix and I imagine most of the Netflix deals there's distance between the kind of like Clarity of who earns which bits and how much can be done with which bits then you've got a massive amount of of commercial complexity that impinges on um design um integrity and then trying to make a commercial game off the back of that you're now not only dealing with the cut uh death by Thousand Cuts of the creativity you've got the death by Thousand Cuts of the of the revenue shares and you're now trying to get an audience for that and that's not not not straightforward so I have a lot of sympathy with what Netflix are trying to do I think that we we don't give them enough credit for the effort they're taking but also I think we also give it too much expectation that it will necessarily win if that makes sense that was really interesting my my general take with like game subscription Services as at Large

is I I I kind of struggled to see the long-term business bottle working and you're you're you're you're you're hiding the lead because you know my opinion on this and I've said it many a time very publicly I have a a basic language for this which is subscription without upset is death and it's a bit extreme but so why is the live Ops Advocate like me saying subscription is death the reason is the subscription is like gym membership so I don't have to earn your subscription your by default paying it automatically I have to cost myself in putting you through too much so much pain that you cancel the subscription so you got to act I got to make you act to cancel it if you get my drift now what that means then is it's very easy to get stuck in routines it's very easy to go to not think that you have to earn the players watch time and you do I mean

regardless of the method and by the way I love subscriptions in terms of the revenue stream but if I can't delight and excite you I cannot make a commercial justification internally in my organization to invest in doing better because the revenue is committed on what we've already delivered they've committed to it but actually why I like games as a service as opposed to subscription Services even if you use the same pricing models is that I've got to come up with player utility consistently and predictably and I can continue to provide things that you want more of and if I can create a a a fan ecosystem where people who are comp play and engage with whether it's free or not um or free or pay it matters because of scale but it doesn't necessarily matter in terms of the implementation but if I can create that desire to play and I can build play and engagement well that

generates revenue and so for me the subscription model makes sense when you're dealing with a movie offering or a or a um a music offering provided it isn't divided by you know you've got to have all the content to make that subscription work all being probably a bit too strong but what's going on at the moment is how many different subscriptions you got to have to get all of the different um experiences you know you've got Paramount you've got you know Apple you've got you know Netflix you've got Prime there are dozens of others um depending what kind of content you want and every time I want to go and get the thing I want my choice of content isn't necessarily matched with the available content you know I still have my Netflix but there's a whole bunch of content out there I just don't get to see so again this is why what I'm saying subscriptions is

non-trivial upsell is what makes that work and yeah and happens when we're actually think about player value yeah I I I I always just uh slightly a tangent for me because it's not really Netflix but like because I know they they're trying to create certain types of experiences but you can't you can't really create like a longterm a game that someone's going to play like forever it no they you not met um you know rcap have you not met World of Warcraft have you not met uh Candy Crush have you not met Angry Birds even and and then they don't you can't put them on a subscription service well because what's the point CU then for the it's one of those things where it like that works for that would work for the platform holder in this case like subscription Services that's exactly would work for the publisher because we're exactly where the MMOs came from yeah right no so but there there's a subscription for

sorry but that in that case it's a subscription for that specific G it is but talking about subscription catalog yeah but subscription catalog the fact that somebody chooses to spend most of their time PL well let's take the one that is kind of in some way dominant in console Space the game pass right so Game Pass I would never have played for out 76 if it wasn't in Game Pass I'm so glad I did it became one of my favorite games I did not want to pay up front for it I became you know able to use it and play it because of that I also carried on playing Starfield and various other games because I have that Xbox game pass as a consumer Xbox game pass is fantastic but do I spend any money on store no I don't why because they stopped taking games out of game pass over time what was really effective about it back in the day always love it when a cap turns up um what I loved about it is a as a

strategist is over every month new games would arrive old games would go so the you you it was managing the um the the tyranny of too much Choice yeah there a tyranny there there's a there's a problem if there's too many things to choose from now um if you know a game is coming in and you get to play it for a period of time and you know it's going to leave at some point the leaving creates a sense of fomo for everything out therefore you can either complete it in the time period available therefore you get on with it or you leave it and you miss it and you can choose to buy it maybe maybe you get offered a discount on the thing as it's about to exit now if that's done well the result is that everyone knows it's coming it's going to be leaving on this day you know

from the date it arrives it's going to go as long as it's consistently delivered on going on going on going we know what we got to expect but because they lost that consistency maybe it wasn't really there but it was in my head You've Lost That expectation therefore some nothing is really seen to leave and therefore there's tyranny of choice racks up the proportion of people are getting percentage of that Revenue go so the incentive for the developers gone and the excitement of the new is diminished because I can still go back and play slay the Spire because I can still go back and play Fallout and that because they're always there therefore there's no excitement anymore the only plus side to that is that there is upsell so I can buy extra stuff and I spend more money on updates to Fallout 76 than I ever would have spent on or than I than the price of the original

package game yeah yeah I'm always curious about that model all for anyone that uh is watching there my cat he's come up to see me for audio listeners I have a cat called Gizmo he's Ginger he's 18 years old so he's he's doing well and but he just wants a bit of a fuss he's been asleep all day and naturally as soon as he I go on the podcast he of course but he's lovely hopefully he doesn't scratch R the show I'll that he does right so yeah thank thanks for all those great insights Netflix I hope you're listening um the 10% the next story so uh there's a new studio that's been formed uh they're called anti-hero Studios founded by ex supercell and King developers that includes Bryce Lille s Martin is the CEO

he formerly worked as marketing creative Direction and operations at supercell uh the founding team also includes a bro star senior game designer Frank Yan uh who joined I think two and a half years ago and really kind of help power that game's Revival I guess that there's a lot of there's really great GGC talk a lot of experimentation uh and then finally they hit they kind of hit the jackpot I guess uh late last year with with some of the changes um and then it's also got xand damco mobile software engineer and King senior technical director Andre perodi so they want to create games worth Shar their mat is create games worth sharing they're focus on socially engaging multiplayer games so this is going to be a perfect topic for you Oscar as the first who wrote the book on games of service yeah um you plug it away that's focal press yeah yeah I'll add a link all good book shops the destion only 10 years old actually I'm just amaz it still works sorry keep going keep going and then uh

uh so we actually uh we interviewed Bryce and he had like kind of a lot to say about what they're doing why I guess they're forming a new studio and how they think they're going to do things differently but the really interesting quote that stood out for me was and I'll just read read the whole quote so I believe idfa so idfa changes uh is a positive turn for the industry as a whole because it forces game developers to refocus on creating games that are worth people's time and attention game developers are tired of making games constrained by what works as an ad they want to focus on making great games worth playing marketers are tired of creating questionable creative ads they want to focus on producing great marketing worth remembering players do not want to engage with games that are not worth playing or remembering uh a couple more quick notes so he later said that there is so much more marketing Innovation going on in other Industries than in gaming which I thought was quite interesting but he highlighted specific um companies like Brands like liquid

death nude projects and gentle monster which break the rules of their respective industry to stand out he said uh they are the brands that matter the brands that are part of culture and that are ultimately remembered by consumers uh yes basically what they want to create social experiences spread by word of mouth and a memorable Brands lastly he did say like nothing against Performance Marketing but he he he said but what what is what they're against is over relying on it and not realizing that if you want to drive business metrics brand matters performance advertising only becomes more efficient the higher your brand awareness more awareness equals higher conversion rate he said so my last Point I've only been saying this for 10 years I I just found interesting because really like it's just interesting to hear someone say like Ida changes are a good thing when it has been it has caused obviously like major

challenges for but put it this way right so the issue isn't the issue with idfa isn't that we don't want privacy privacy is something we should be doing the issue with idfa in my opinion is the way that it was implemented by Apple and uh you know this is my opinion again methodology that they used in the notifications when it was an internal Apple product versus it being an external Apple product to me did not seem like an equitable way to do it it did not seem like a consumer friendly way of doing it or one which would support an ecosystem of app developers in my opinion the result of it is that we ended up with a hole a massive hole of Apple users which obviously is a significant proportion of not just you know players but also Spenders in in in apps in general and that disproportionately affected the

other third parties like the Googles and the Facebooks that we have often relied on in terms of identifying um and targeting players absolutely true um now similar problem is obviously you know we haven't seen an effective Apple solution that allows us to do the kind of targeting we would want arise from that in my opinion again but again you know that doesn't take away what they're saying the line is that we've always and like I said I've been saying this for 10 years we dismiss the value of brand building at our Peril we have been overly relying on Performance Marketing um and don't get me wrong as a former evangelist of the very use of Performance Marketing through roed ads I'm not trying to dismiss performance you know Performance Marketing at all it's a miracle of data it's a fantastic thing the fact that you know whether we're dealing with you know attributing

an individual or a cohort of individuals through interests I don't think is as important as the fact that we're doing intelligent datadriven exercises so idfa has removed the individual targeting elements or a proportion of those um and made us rightly focus on interest and concept and therefore creative and that is a good thing and I I wholeheartedly agree with these guys that that is a good thing that doesn't mean we aren't going to suffer if you're a smaller developer and you don't have big budgets because the cost of identifying and targeting the very people you want is more expensive as a direct result it just is that's it the irony is at the same time post so again I'm G to get all sorts of things if I'm not careful because you could add in covid and that hid the impact and now postco we no longer hidden from the impact and we've had the reduction in people's ability

and willing to spend because the economic impacts of various you know Wars and combats and and shenanigans whether Mr Trump uh returns to power is not going to be important in this concept as well in my opinion but anyway all that side what is it what are they these guys saying for me games that are worth sharing is absolutely what we should always be doing have the incentives been disproportionately on keeping people on a page to watch more ads yes that's what hypercasual did that doesn't mean that hypercasual didn't bring something interesting too hyper casual taught us the importance of rapidity so doing things really fast iterating fast and I mean incredibly fast in hours not days not weeks not months using data is an absolute and focusing like a laser on single playable mechanisms and I think if we can bring that

hypothesis Le evidence-based mindset that hyper casual with this more creative conceptual narrative engaging emotional driven design that's when we're going to get the best experiences because at the end of the day what really matters is are we satisfying player experiences that's it everything else is BS you know the bottom line is unless we are identifying satisfying Real Player experiences we're not getting there how we monetize that is a question of how we you know think is the most appropriate mechanism that feels most naturally resonant with a player and I always feel like something ongoing is generally best if you have a game which playing is generally ongoing so that's why I'm a free to-play guy most of the time because I think if I've got a game experience that you want to keep playing and I can keep it interesting I'm going

to find a mechanism where I BR bring value to you that makes sense with the way you play the game and that to me is what all this is about I mean you know there us some great language in there yes I'm glad somebody's saying that it's not all bad the ideaa has happened but I think the way it was done was particularly not great for the industry yeah um but the idea that we have to be more creative and actually with all of these things even the whole downturn we're now starting to see the sort of seeds the gr green shoot starting at the same time we're still seeing things dying off it's we're in a messy period right now the positive that that will come out of that in my opinion is the way that we um we we find stronger teams more creative teams teams that maybe got cast out because of reorganization with these merged maybe you could argue uh teams that had existed them streamlining the people who leave having a bit of kind of hopefully some of them having a bit of cash out

after that process not all of them will and there's a lot of tragedies in this process a lot of tragedies we don't hear about uh we've had to you know pull our belts as well so we totally understand it was some some of our team you know very sad for but the bottom line is the there is a lot of opportunity that comes out of this and I've seen Cycles like this before probably not quite as deep but every single time we see new things new new interesting things and one of those periods we saw supercell come out you know one of those periods we saw you know other teams of equal scale you know we see these emergent you know industry challenging teams uh either directly or indirectly timed with some of these disturbances in the uh the model yeah I think the there was um you make a good point I remember at think gaming istan so structureal fun event Eric Crest was on

stage and not to play down at all like this kind of the the state the the games industry uh but he he made anting point that it was like this probably the first crash Not Crash sorry don't use that word it's the first like downturn I guess of like the mobile games market so there have been them at large for the games industry previously but mobile hadn't had been through that so it might actually seem the whole situation and then it kind of seems a bit worse then actually it's kind of actually I'm not saying it's a good thing but these things do happen and then you do come out eventually on the other side things are a bit different yeah and I think one of the points here as well is a lot of people talk about um you know mobile being the thing that changed things um I'm not convinced that's quite true I mean it's not wrong wrong but I think it's coincidence that it was mobile to a certain extent I

think it was a a new space devicewise that would allow datadriven techniques to operate including ads where the audience were not going to reject that new approach we haven't seen that happen in console we haven't seen that happen in in PC because the audience is more mature and established and have different expectations so they're not going to be as happy to see and in the experience um I don't think that will never happen I just think it's unlikely to happen without some really radical rethinking about what ads look like um and you know at the end of the day there was a moment in the early days of rewarded ads when we would we had PE we had consumers off the street in panels in game industry sessions and they said you know people are they ask these genuine consumers um should they get rid of rewarded ads would they pay to get rid of rewarded ads and they said

no they wanted the rewarded ads now things have changed we've got these stupid mechanics that ad companies I in my opinion wrongly added so extending the the duration of the ad making it hard to find how to close the ad forcing you to play a playable after watching the ad all of these nonsense things that make it a worse experience has changed people's opinion and it made people a lot more cynical but at the time think about the idea that I'm running I'm doing a run I screw up right near the end all I have to do is watch ad to get another chance to continue but only get one chance that it's not like it's a get out free forever card get one one go that means I've effectively got a power I don't have to pay for I can just watch and feel like I get to save the day and all I do is spend 30 seconds watching it out now that's a different way of thinking

and unfortunately we're not in that space because all the extra garbage that's been added on to the process yeah it just randomly reminds me uh I think I know the company but I can't quite remember so I won't call them out specifically because it might be wrong but they they they released this big report and one of a lot of it was about ads and one of them I swear it they were basically just saying um like more ads is better basically and then given some ridiculous data about it and and I just like I'm just looking at it like I mean of course you'd say that you you want more ads in games because that's how you make your money I just I was like is this even true yeah oh I know I mean I've seen some ridiculous ones uh some chucked in with blockchain and various other things as well uh and I'm not I'm 100% against blockchain it just you know just when you see when you smell a p Ponzi scheme you can smell a Ponzi scheme yeah um but again not saying every blockchain is

that um but I think the sort of issues I had so for example we had some games back in the early days of testing this stuff um where we would have 30 ad views a day on average think about that 30 and that's insane but it was the way people were playing those games at that time and okay it was fairly fresh and early in the era of of that stuff but again you know when you put it into context we're talking about four or five sessions a day maybe even five or six sessions a day so that number of ads split by that number of sessions it stops being quite so ridiculous when you think of it like oh I'm G to get this ad gives me a a double uh reward for a double rewards this time this ad lets me restart a screwed up play this ad lets me open a a reward crate early um again the difficulty and by the way I'm not

recommending people do this at all do not do this just saying this is some examples of in the early days we saw it wasn't a question of the number of ads it was a question of the value it gave you and so if the players feel that stuff is worth it that's okay but it's got to be worth it if it's not worth it don't do it yeah and I'm I'm in the middle of writing a book on the subject which why I'm pontificating about this stuff because I'm letting it go through my mind how I'm going to write up so we just got like the perfect stories for you today osar yeah yeah exact well like last last time you had me on you had Unity removing the during the during Lally during the session hilarious hilarious by the way just just a shout out the number of unity folks who were really nice to me after my article and um been since this uh announcement I I have to sort of get them cutos yeah definitely on the uh definitely on the big charm offensive at the moment well well you see but that's another topic

indeed for another time so uh we we spent quite a bit of time on those couple stories I'm going to quickly run through a couple and thenum we view derail you no no and then uh so supercell is hiring for a small cross functional team based in London to support development on Squad Busters uh so a couple roles that they had going at least earlier this week of the M Val more senior game program as senior game artist senior game data analyst um so now they've just basically getting a small office to get them all together they already have they already sort of majority own space trailb in the city but now they've got another office space but yeah notled three yeah people though I think that's interesting uh so actually so I reached out to them and they said it said basically they actually already employ quite a few people in and around the London area so they decided that it makes sense they

could have an office that people could go to um and some of those would be helping with Squad Busters um makes sense but yeah I think it was just a space where they can kind of get together well it's a epitomy of the example of a we can remote every we can remote work anywhere and I honestly believe remote working is so powerful um I'm I'm still frustrated the teams that have gone back U because I think it it impinges I mean am of wasted hours traveling to an office so me it just seems insane but equally but equally you know at the end of the day it I think it shows that you know whil they have an amazing um environment in hink and it's a great place to go you know it is still difficult to recruit locally yeah I mean they they made uh it's about year two nearly two years ago now in nus blog post they were talking about they're looking at remote working and potentially having some people do that there still major Focus I think on on internal at Hell Studio yeah uh but

yeah now they're kind of expanding their like you said they're talentful I guess but like you said earlier it's like there's you know you know not all of the same systems are in place nowadays so you know things will change a few other quick stories to go through uh games industry m&a activity hit $2.5 billion in Q3 that's the fourth consecutive quarter of growth uh a lot that powered in the last quarter by pl's acquisition of super play for 700 million up front worth 1.95 billion technically two billion I keep saying 1.95 billion but there's an earnout of 50 million as well so for the for the founders I think it's interesting particularly I've also heard a lot of um so the angel investment community in the UK have started doing more as well so I definitely see a uh definitely see a positive shift at the moment we are there yet but in terms of you know we're still seeing net more

negative news than we are seeing positive news but I think we are starting to see more positive news and it is getting there you know I think before you by the time we get to 25 it'll be a little bit easier hopefully we're all hoping yeah then and then uh this reported by mobile gamer hoft cancelled uh qu getaway they pass the decorate game apparently going to take the lessons from that as they move forward I don't know what that means for their mobile strategy they don't really much have one they do have some like talented teams like Cy but well I'm I'm old enough to remember when they separated their they took their mobile license of their console games back from Game Loft and that was a that was an interesting era um but that's quite a long time ago we're talking about you know I mean honestly I can't remember maybe 20 years nearly I mean it's got to be in that order of magnitude because that was originally the thing is that Game Loft

were the mobile and UB were the uh the rest of it and there was also a separate team that Christian um who one one of the other brothers ran called AMA that did um sort of non-game app type stuff um but you know like I say things have evolved a lot since and then lastly uh pop reach games has closed its Vancouver Studio I think that basically means pop reach no longer exists uh the India Studio was bought and and their catalog was bought early this year by Phoenix games group and I think ionic their owner has basically been saying in their investor relations that they're pulling out of games focusing elsewhere then lastly some investment news party icons lands $9 million in seed for mobile first in seed funding for mobile first web free games and I think it was UAE based investment firm Redwood acquires majority stake in Indian game streaming startup Loco for 65 million I dollars uh they're going to expand globally try and take on Twitch in areas

where it's not uh that big apparently we'll see how that goes so that is the end of the uh the news section we're going to jump into the week views with whole time doing that there basically one long week views yeah but it's interesting you mentioned the India investment thing you know as well we'll get good Segway well I mean how much we go into it so I mean I I thought it was interesting because I definitely seem to be getting a sense the of a kind of changing sort of um well I think it's more more of a culmination I mean India's been involved in the games industry for a very long time uh I remember India games back in the day uh being one of the earliest kind of mobile teams that we worked with and that team ended up I was forget who they ended up as um anyway I can't remember exactly it might been Zinger it might been Disney I think it was was Disney I think they they were bought by originally anyway

but the point is that there's always been an India games environment but I'm definitely getting a sense of a a positive kind of maturing in that space uh and a definit kind of um increas in engagement there's a particular we occasionally do things like due diligence of um particular games we're working with one one team for an Indian developer I won't say the name I don't want to kind of like um you know cross the street dreams but um I was incredibly impressed but not just by the fact they had a really efficient and good Tech Team but their creative application was really good and they were producing uh kind of the sort of Dino Dash style mobile games and they had some track record um but doing for somebody else's IP but got to see their own IP and they had this nice little twist it was essentially bringing a new flavor new kind of reason to keep playing um and it

it really kind of showed me that there's a maturity in design that I hadn't seen before so I've definitely seen them and there's a couple of other game there's a small team that just trying to raise funding at the moment um I'm kind of uh uh talking to and um the guy who's setting up who's xvc himself um he's got track recording making games too he showed me his like oh have a look this is just one of our ideas and it was like like oh my God I want this game now and it was like it was magical you know when you already see it but occasionally you've done the big ID pcture enough times you know you see a game and most of them and then one of them you go oh my God yeah for sure and it was that moment but it's probably this the most I most enthusiastic I think I've ever been someone showing me a demo game and you you would have seen like a like to be clear you'd have seen a lot you've seen lot a lot oh I've seen hundreds of

thousands of games I can't remember how many games I've seen I it's you know you think about it you know I've been in the industry 26 27 years um I've done more of judging probably than most people I think the only person I can think of who's probably seen more games is Jupiter who now runs the big Indie pitch yes uh because she's insane and does every she reviews every indie game Jam game so she's lovely but she's insane love it a bit but um anyway the the point is that you know I'm not lacking in having seen games um I this game really excited me really kind of made and and this is like you know just the first idea they had um there's a there's a another company um that I'm I'm I'm actually Contracting with um and they're basically trying to work out what they're trying to make and the pitch is great I mean they haven't got the full kind of spec yeah and I'm obviously going to be helping them with that but

I'm not normally I'm sat there going but you where's the creative idea where's the twist where's the unique selling point where's the where's the reason for me to as a player to care and I think I'm definitely seen a step change in IND the game development uh of late um and I think that it's it's triggered by this in this economic circumstance with an environment which is already very Tech Centric very capable Tech technically because so much investment in you know Outsourcing and development various other things in that space and at the same time a gradual maturing as they've got more and more exposed to Western and Asian content I think there's been a maturing in that industry and I think we just at the point where I I suspect we're going to start seeing an explosion of really talented Indian game studios I've been to what was it used to be called it's

now called the India game developer conference I think they're about they're doing it like now like next week or something something like that yeah yeah uh um I'm not going to be this year but I've been to previous years and it was just really interesting to see how they're kind of coming together the studios to to help it grow get it International attention and they've been working at it for a very long time uh Unity used to do I if they still do some like shows alongside it but anyway so it's it's just been interesting to see it grow I think this so you had like games like uh that I guess made outside of India pubg and free fire really shown that that market there is potential to make Revenue there um so I think that's been a real positive for the industry despite like the band that they got and then and then they're back and they're not and then they're back um it looks like I really want to get the river in front of me but like I I don't think they're

really at where they wanted to be like as as an industry like as a market by Revenue like they've always talked about the potential and I think it's still the case where it it's high really high downloads and not so much higher Revenue just talk about it's interesting the quality of the devices so we've done a bunch of tests with the Indian market because we wanted volume to be able to test um uh kind of like performance of the game experience um and we were quite amazed how high spec the devices were we went in with an expectation of low quality devices and that wasn't the case um we definitely saw a lower Revenue U very low ad Revenue in terms of because obviously specific targeting of that audience in as a well scales therefore it's going to be cheaper therefore you're going to get less Revenue um so I think there are some economic questions about the local market but the

dev teams I'm talking about their focus is actually on the global market so I think your point of there is a really impressive Market there the scale is phenomenal there are some specific genres that are no-brainers uh basically if you want to find the best cricket game in the world you're going to find it in India no question about it there's about 30 of them at the top wow there's more than 30 there's hundreds of them um but there is more than that I mean there are there are teams out there doing really interesting things and like any climate they're going to you know any any any Market they're going to have their specific tastes again it is a complicated Market because of the disparity between the high earners and the low earners um it's not quite as complicated as the Indian as the African Market where there's so much as prepaid prepaid card based um I think I'm right saying not quite the same in India but I don't think the again I I'm not as o as I

should be on this but I think it's the case that there's there's not the same connection between the handset manufacturers and the on The Operators and the way that you buy things so I think there's complexity there as well which doesn't help um couple of quick points I wanted to make was that uh I guess the two the two big companies I guess kind of emerged over the years nazara I guess has been around for a very long time but it very notable and at the moment past year they've been they've been making a lot of uh Acquisitions and Investments they bought think discussed the podcast few couple months ago uh they bought obviously fuse box in the UK uh they had $100 million War chest now I think they've raised a fer like 100 million the uh the CEO nitish was saying you know he's been running this company for a long time and for many years they couldn't get investment and so it kind

of sounds like the think I think you mentioned this a minute ago the investment Landscapes changed in India specifically and that they are able to attract like bigger investors now for for their Ambitions I definitely feel like there's a step change in the investment Community like I said we've engaged with one of those investment teams to do some due diligence work and um it was yeah it was really interesting talking to them and their their expectations which are no different from any other kind of VC in terms of scale the only caveat that they had was wanting to deploy specifically in the local Indian market um so the fact that there is a bunch of investment Community people there that feel that they can focus their attention on that market and and gain fors in that market to me just speaks volumes about the the potential for that sector grow and also a shout out to I

guess wiso gaming uh they uh probably the other big publisher there's a few like Gamin does really well out there in India but yeah wio um they've been hugely successful but they've also they set up the India Pavilion at various events so they did it at GC I think they did it at Gamescom uh uh games called latam at least uh and they basically fund some developers to come over with them and they show off their games on the booth once again to kind of publicize the industry and maybe attract Investment Partners Etc so yeah a lot going on in India I feel like this will be forever saying for the next decade still this is a grow Market but at least it's not going the other way yeah yeah exactly exactly and and like I said I think I think the generally thing you know positive signs uh throughout I just think that we're not quite at the end of the difficult times yeah yeah so uh thanks that Oscar I'm going

to I'm going to really quickly run through uh just article I wrote I'll put the link in the description so people can see it there uh I'll do the quick Cliff Notes uh I wrote article like I've been wanting to write this for a while but everything is a games platform yes I am riffing off of Eric Suz everything is an ad Network just to be clear but it just occurs because like all these kind of announcements that sometimes seem ridiculous but it's always fascinating but now you know you've had it in the past you've had like Snap uh they they edit it but they tried to do games uh Tik Tok experimented with games uh now it's a I guess a brilliant marketing Community platform which is now they're Focus but they've tried games and then now you've got like kind of Discord they did do their games Marketplace it failed uh but now they're doing Discord activity so actual games

on the platform um LinkedIn is doing games telegram's doing games uh and it's actually doing really well well numbers wise is doing really well on on Telegram and actually maybe that's a really good platform emerging for web free gaming um you can play games on Zoom or you could play games on Zoom I don't know if that's still a thing but basically you could just play them anywhere oh yeah New York Times uh obviously they they've done really well with games I actually play a few of those a day now they but they acquired world I love connections brilliant game um I think obviously you got in in in China you got WeChat mini games which made uh Accord to an article by uh yakob rumar he it made uh $2.3 billion in the first half of 2024 uh which which is amazing about to surpass 500 million users in China for

we mini games um so I guess my point basically is just everything is becoming that I guess why I guess it's just a way to engage in theory it's a way to engage users to be using your platform more so they don't go anywhere else you've got all these users can you find a way to one engage them and also potentially monetize them if that's part of your goal uh I I in the end I just finished the article with saying like you know whether these some of these attempts kind of whether some of these attempts to provide new destinations for gaming prove fruitful in the long term remains to be seen often times I think the business case for platform holders outweighs the one for developers so and that ultimately brings about their failure but everyone just wants it on GES yeah well we seeing this before as well with you know I think CED it once line was is doing it at one point I think WeChat does it as well I mean um

if you've got a platform I mean what do we do socially as human beings we play you know makes sense um The mooji Works folks are really interesting if you ever gets a chance to them I did a podcast on the game day London game local podcast I keep saying London it's local change the name game local podcast I did a chat with her she just released a book on um game design worth sharing uh basically I I might miss stated the the thing but there's a lot of uh if anyone's interested in these kind of like shared experience stuff um the stuff that Moji work guys do is really interesting so and Moi Works was um is Matthew Wiggins who who was ex Zinger London or Zinger UK yeah M Matt's Fab that whole team's just yeah yeah they got a lot of experience there and uh but and the other thing I'll just touch upon is I guess like everywhere is becoming gam platform think a lot of that is powered by web gaming at the moment which just kind of made a a comeback of sorts uh and I

remember years ago I I looked back in 2012 I wrote an article about HTML 5 and then like for the next decade you you just hear like all like HML 5 is coming or like everyone suddenly like it's not really actually for game it's not really a thing now and then now it's actually kind of powering some of those experiences the much it's amazing what you can do with hmfi and webgl um uh the the issue has always been streamlining the user experience for making purchases it's always been that and you know anyone who manages to make that feel natural and easy which should be trivial I would have thought given the amount of things we buy online um it should be trivial but I don't think anyone's really nailed that experience and particularly how can I promote my app on your platform I think that's the thing that they they often solve the spend but

they never seem to get around to solving the promotion part just as I think one of the challenges that some of these face like if you're going to like telegram gets around it maybe LinkedIn gets around it Discord but like it's actually I I spoke about it before so I went over the point but like when Facebook Instant games came about uh and I think it was an issue with Google I can't remember was Google or apple think it's Google they basically Facebook wanted their 30% cut and then so did Google and so developers made 49% share which obviously was unacceptable and then so well you're telling me the guy that took 60% when I was doing Java mobile well hey I still paid out more money than anybody else at the time it was nothing but and uh but yeah it was just like so sometimes you were kind of at the mercy of the larger I guess actual platform holder not just your app or whatever but then this comes to me

back to the questions that I think we still haven't resolved are the EU going to re enforce the abil you know the Epic kind of like argument uh that you should be able to have multiple app stores are we're going to find better ways of of dealing with it at the moment you know I can't even buy a a uh uh Kindle uh book on my phone without opening a browser separately I mean that's insane you not just like can you she can't do it in the app no you you have't you've never been out to do on Apple uh but um I me I can't remember how recently but I I I haven't been buying Kindle books for ages and N you tried to buy a book today on Kindle and the Amazon app won't let you buy it anymore and um I had to go into a browser Page open up the browser page and then buy crazy world that we now live in yeah absolutely absolutely

insane so yeah but you know look again back to the point is where does that 30% if if you want to get into the difficulties of working out the exceptions and all that kind of stuff you know we we don't want to have back to our tyranny of choice we don't want to have to choose which of the 30 streaming platforms which of the 30 app stores you know which game is on which store it's a nightmare I don't I just want to go play the thing we just need better ways of managing that's like I guess like slightly that is slightly different topic but I think we spoke about it on the show not that long ago where it was just like you you don't want there to be a monopoly of a Marketplace so steam example on PC however how convenient is steam is fantastic uh obviously there's massive cons and then there's pros for this but like to your point there's that era of every publisher was just like well we want our own store so

here's origin here's ubisoft's thing whatever it was called yeah here's something uh battl net here rock stars club or whatever it was and it's just like I don't want all of these I want it in one place uh because I don't want to have to load the ball up now there's just a couple it kind of makes more sense so it's that weird thing but retail solved it they had wholesalers and retailers so you go to the retailer you want wanted and they would Source the game from the wholesaler so you know why aren Google being a wholesaler rather than a retailer interesting question very I mean yeah you'd have less you know shares but what would happen is the integrated marketing effort that could be done by brands that were selling experience anyway I'm available for consultancy work we get way off toic right right let's uh but the point is we're talking about consumer experiences and what at the moment we have is a is a complicated consumer experience yeah um

and and at the end of the day we just want to make games that people want to play well it so uh that brings us to the end uh of the long end do only been in how many hours yeah well it's only been one year quarter you see you shouldn't invite me on I can't stop talking no it's been brilliant fantastic uh real industry ites that I think everyone will really appreciate so thank you so much for being on the show Oscar have a fantastic time thank you everyone for tuning in and listening we'll catch you again next week see you soon thanks bye see you soon folks