Week in Mobile Games E38 - Xbox and Adjust mishandle their PR and Supercell's culture revolution

[Music] hello welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and attempt at least to provide some insights I'm C Chapel head of content at pocketgamer.biz and with me today is Aaron Asel our newsletter our news editor not a newsletter not a newsletter no no hopefully not yeah how you doing what you been up yeah I'm good than it's still cold here in the UK where I am we've been having some floods this week as well which isn't ideal yeah it's not ideal lots of closed roads difficult to go out thankfully we've not been directly affected where I am but only like 10 15 minutes away got people like leaving the area you know there's like risk of flooding in their houses and stuff so of

rain so yeah it was obviously very stormy here as well so we're both in the UK for anyone listening and um I was I didn't actually know that this big storm was coming somehow I've just been focused on like other news and um get the H this the noise of it was just howling I was like quite surprised and uh like everything outside just kept flying around like the bins and recycling stuff so try to sort that out and then uh a couple days later I went to get my hair and the hairdresser was saying that he was putting on his shoes uh he putting on his shoes in the porch I think about to go out when the uh in the porch in the lobby sorry and then uh a tree outside his house fell over flattened his daughter's car at the driveway and destroyed their porch so he was nearly caught by that so yeah it was when we say it was very windy it's not just British people like

oh it's quite it's quite windy out there it's a bit Breezy obviously we don't get like the horendous kind of hurricanes you get elsewhere but no it was it was really bad actually and yeah he was very lucky but but other than uh stories about other people I have done literally nothing this week so uh just playing Starcraft there's a new patch out people no one's interested uh but it makes Play My Race actually a lot more difficult play the Z just like an alien um so I basically feel like I've got to learn the whole game again um and I'm not very good in the first place oh yeah such such a life place to craft I guess we'll just we're going to move swiftly on no page because she's actually it's her birthday and she she's away for a few days so hope you have birthday paig happy birthday hope you having a great time you'd better be listening to the podcast yeah you still have to listen p

s um so as always just a quick shout out so we've got pocket gaming connects London coming on January 20th 21st if you're interested to speaking please submit a talk we're also open to panelists if you want to do that um and if you want to attend obviously buy a ticket I think right now I don't know if it'll still be going by the time the podcast is out we've got a Black Friday promotion so and I think early bird ticket uh discounts are still on as well so if you got to go you might as well grab one um and then just quick uh hopefully by the time this is out we have announced so uh we're going to do we do our top 50 list top 50 mobile game makers uh for Global and we're going to do a top 30 UK developers list or UK game makers list which is open to not just mobile it's like PC console as well so keep an eye out for that I'll put a link in the description but that's enough that's enough of that I guess so straight on to the news this is like record time I feel like I got a few Ransom me today so uh I'll start with

Microsoft has delayed its Android store after us Court temporarily pauses Google Play remedies so if you remember there was a case between epic and Google which epic won the judge ruled that the Google Play Store had become an illegal Monopoly Google had previously been ordered to open up the Play Store to rival marketplaces and given them access to the full library of Google Play app apps on top of that for a period of three years from November 1st of this year Google's ordered to allow the use of alternate payment methods um but that's kind of been put on hold and I think I believe there's an appeal going through as well the one thing that the judge didn't stop uh was that Google it still prevents Google currently uh from blocking rival app stores is pre-installation through deals uh with carriers on manufacturers so it

can't you know block uh competitors Microsoft has said because of this kind of temporary pause that it can't launch its xbo Xbox Android store which it announced back in like may I feel like I mean it's I get it it's challenging but this kind of feels like an excuse to me apparently the store is literally ready to go uh it just needs the laws to change I would be shocked if it's ready I think it's kind of come out before Partners don't seem to know what's going on there's been no announcement ever Through official channels which shocks me I think I mentioned this before the only time you ever hear about it is the fireside chat was it at Bloomberg and then all the other announcements are on social media from Sarah Bond the Xbox president why not launch in Europe I I get that there are some of the same challenges but I don't know why not I think the stop starts stop nature of

this now where they announce it give a date and then the date goes by and then it's like delayed and then it's announced again and then it's officially delayed it's it's it's kind of embarrassing at this point as I say I don't think they' asked it for any official channels uh Microsoft has this kind of enormous marketing apparatus for Xbox but none of that has been dedicated to It Mobile ambitions and I wonder how that makes potential Partners feel or people that might have already partnered with Microsoft on on this store I wonder how much they still know like they wouldn't do this for their console business or on PC like that would that would really be embarrassing imagine it would never happen and so what makes mobile where they plan to launch a serious Marketplace and business different I think they need to kind of get a grip to be honest and take mobile games companies and the industry seriously there's no use in having this

opportunity to rival Google playally the App Store in other cases if they treat it as just something they do on the side like that's not how Microsoft built the Xbox business and it won't be how they build a m how they build a mobile store like that is not how you compete with like there's no use in having like okay we can use we could kind of do what we want now the the market the platforms are open and then just half ass it no matter what happens like Google play with them will still be Top Apple will still be top or another competitor will emerge like this this is just not the way to go about it at all I actually think they should stop if I for what it's worth you know I I I've been a journalist for a long time and I've also been kind of a little bit on the marketing PR side my advice would be stop talking about it at all on social media just just don't bother just talk about it privately with partners

just be very honest and open with them and only announce it for official channels just you just got to stop tweeting about tweeting about it or posting about it on blue sky or whatever or Link in it's enough of that and yeah treat it seriously I think I'm done but uh yeah I'm just not very impress with it at all yeah it's a weird um approach yeah to not yeah announce things officially um I can't really imagine doing that with yeah like a console product or yeah anything games related on that kind of level really and know it's not like you know if it isn't ready then that's one thing which yeah as you say likely it's just not ready to go otherwise yeah you'd think why not release it where they can for the moment but yeah it's a weird one it almost feels like they're treating it like they're just going to end up falling into having a successful App Store when

like it's very unlikely to be that easy like yeah they do need to approach it in a proper proper way if they want people to take it seriously as well like it comes across that they're not serious about it why would anyone else be that's the point right if you're a big publisher and you see this at you see this kind of L like stal attitude towards this story just like well why why should we invest all this money and supporting your store when we're getting this in return obviously that might change once once it actually goes live but at the moment the early signs are pretty poor so I found this story quite astonishing as well so adjust mobile app measurement and marketing platform which is owned by applo and quiet it for a billion dollars couple years ago they've laid off a bunch of stuff and that came out on last Friday no numbers were kind of there was

no like comment on it so we reached out we didn't get any comment back heard numbers like 40% 50% of Staff but it it kind of it feels a bit crazy because you know within the app loving business which is kind of growing rapidly and is highly profitable that they' lay off so many stuff again don't know quite how many could be in the hundreds but you know I guess the other side of that is you could say it's probably down to the performance of an individual business like division within the company and so if it's not if it's not performing as well as they want it to then maybe that's kind of where the layoffs come and I wonder if there's a role that AI plays here um I have no idea about that that could be a stupid comment but I know that AI plays a role in kind of the rest of its business a recent War notice in California noted that 120 staff were being laid off at applo in and that's on top of other War

notices which will kind of Bring It well technically to hundreds but I don't know if like that all these other numbers as well I don't know if they're all related or if it ends up at 120 because this is just a notice uh and I and I don't know if that includes adjust one of the crazy things was that uh when this this came out on the Friday then on Saturday a just announced a new CEO uh which I've never seen in my career that I can remember anyway a company Saturday announcement or Saturday announcement so they put out a blog post on the Saturday which I just found a bit crazy there's one thing you you do well in this case it wasn't this but like there's one thing like people put sorry companies put bad news out on a Friday last thing on a Friday so kind of everyone's logged off and maybe even the

journalists aren't around if they are they'll publish it but everyone else that reads it is probably off the weekend so you put out a sort Friday because you think well it will get less traction um but they put this out on a Saturday for a new CEO which is amazing to me so it's the former chairman Andre kazakov and he he's now the new CEO no mention in this blog post uh was made of the outgoing Simon ducart but presumably he's out and I don't know if he left was part of the layoffs or or what the blog post I keep saying it again published on a Saturday talk talks about important changes and running a just as an engineering first company but there's no direct mention of the layoffs that were made so I would say again kind of from like a PR perspective and also as a journalist like i' say acknowledge the layoffs so G

we reached out but had no reply still have had no reply a week later um and make sure the CEO's post so whoever wrote that like acknowledges the outgoing staff's hard work um again I don't know like the influences at play to how that got put together um I think it kind of just makes a just look bad and then the story gets out out of control with speculative numbers thrown out that's why you should really just get on top of bad news because then you otherwise you create this vacuum where people just start rumors just start and people start throwing numbers I heard it's 40% I heard it was 50% uh and I'll go say in a minute that some someone says it about 300 stuff like none of these figures that you don't know like adjust could just at least say something or at loving could kind of say something so

yeah on top of all of this this is all like really quite Terri like well the layout's obviously like terrible so on top of all this the blog post said I strongly this is from uh COV I strongly feel the MMP industry has stagnated in recent years right so clearly there a rival company called singular has taken exception of that and also taking this situation as an opportunity to kind of take a massive dig at their rival and promote their own vacancies and their business their CEO G Al alash sorry for the pronunciation has a blog post on singular on singular website specifically on adjust layoffs like it says that in the headline which I think is crazy in it in and of itself he calls out that's speculative 304 staff were affected and gives some link to some site says and then claims that entire teams were eliminated and Engineering would be integrated into

l so again there like this vacuum that someone has now taken advantage of that could have been probably fixed I wonder if this blog post would have come out if things have been done differently by Jos I don't know who knows survival just taking an opportunity which I'm quite astonished that they would do that to be honest like this he actually apologizes on a on a just behalf to the affected staff so again you've sort of left an opportunity open and again obviously trying to promote singers vacancies so this is not just out of like the kindness of their hearts I guess the post goes into adjusts undoing and said adjust has lost high-profile customers to singular and then they claimed they are barely included in the consideration set for new customers partnering with an MMP it's it's an astonishing TI raade which I guess we'll see what happens from a legal perspective after that but it also kind of comes out of kind of this mishandling of the

situation by just at Lovin yeah it was so really feel for the impacted stuff and then the things that have developed since then so I keep using the words I can't think of another one but just crazy yeah I guess it's quite a bold move from you know the singular CEO is it but um yeah as you say sort of they've left this void that he's quite handly been able to come in and fail and yeah try and get people over I guess cuz he knows that you know people have just been laid off who are probably have a good like skill set for his company if they're competitors a clever move as long as there are no legal implications I guess yeah I'm just just just astonished by by these events um so elsewhere in the news bit more well I say a bit more of a positive note and then the headline is supercell CEO IL capan said I was actually quite worried about the company

this this is us doing more positive news um so Ela did a fireside chat at slush recently I think it was last week I put a link in the description to the story that we did and also did a full transcript if you want to read like everything he said it was really interesting basically just goes into what's already very publicly known the uh changes that have been act enacted at supercell over the past one to two years and they've kind of changed their company cult Ila said basically worried about the business a couple years ago before they started making the changes he said so a few quotes quickly so he said we found a supercell to create these games that as many people as possible would play for years and games that would be remembered forever if you look about the big picture the fact was that we hadn't actually been growing for a number of years and at the same time at the same time the market was growing therefore we were losing share and if that Trend would have continued for say a decade at some point the fact is we would fade into being

irrelevant and therefore we wouldn't actually reach our mission which is of course a huge problem and then he said that they had a kind of a big all hands at the company and said we actually watched a timeline where we were seeing super C's position dropping year over-year and finally even out from the top 10 and of course it's a very painful thing to watch but I think it's necessary for us to do and really face the truth and obviously then you want to change but change has to start from me really really just interesting chat about I guess what went into the changes like what what sparked those and so now they've effectively split the business into two parts to change their approach so it's new teams or live teams uh I know people know but I'll go into it quickly so for new teams kind of the same culture that they've always had this cell culture with a lot of Independence but it also includes now their kind of spark initiative this is actually interestingly open not just to

internal teams but to external teams as well the idea is to for teams that can make great games rather than just have a great game I think and build a team that's kind of probably a messy way to describe it to be honest but effectively the focus is on teams not just the product and they even have a psychologist to help kind of Greenlight the teams I guess for the project they want to work on um next I have the live teams where super cell obviously finally decided to build bigger teams they hired Sarah who's now there I think his chief live games officer now um kind of lead oversee all of that but effectively these these sound like they're kind of sub businesses within the larger company so before they kind of kept this small sales structure which which did result in highly profitable games which is kind of why supercell's famous but with competitors growing supercell struggling to release something new for what was it five years until Squad Busters with you

know so who it's it's not gone as a super so launch would otherwise gone whether you could blame that on the changes or don't I don't know but yeah so the times wi in declin so something had to give ilka actually said terms like structure process and middle management were almost like curse words the company but now they've actually embrace that for the live game side of the business so that must be a tough cultural change for a lot of people at the company and he he did kind of obviously I guess you wouldn't necessarily go into everybody hated it actually but he said he was like thanking people for thank you for embracing the change again obviously it's probably not worked out for Squad Busters as a new game but again don't know if those changes kind of reflective of why that game failed but braw stars and Clash Royale have grown again still need to wait and see I think ultimately for a couple of years what supercell looks like like if you get this temporary bump because of I know

Clash Royale is growing but like ultimately what happens to braw Stars if that starts going down like you just you kind of return to the same problem but yeah it was a really interesting CH I I recommend everyone read that always interesting to hear what has to say um so I'll very quickly go through other news so Monopoly go develop scopely has opened a new studio in Saudi Arabia I think that that was basically just part of the whole acquisition they bought a few years ago by sey games group for $4.9 billion and they kind of hinted not hinted they very much said earlier this year that they wanted scope to have more of a presence and also ESL which another group they own in Saudi so that's now happening um I don't think there's any word on specifically what they'd be working on and and how they actually fit in I don't know if it's a a development studio in its own right that works on its own politics or they help other projects wasn't very clear and

then app charge so they make kind of web shops power third party payments they've landed $26 million to boost direct their direct scuba platform so congrats to them they're like a kind of I guess competitor to companies like exola um and it just shows how trendy that space has become this year kind of because of those regulations like the digital markets act and some we were talking about earlier but they they didn't delay their investment round because of a judge pausing certain of rules anyway bit different my my games has launched the mg VC publishing Division and it has $100 million marketing budget to scale mobile games Nara has neted 100 million to accelerate its strategic Acquisitions and expansion plans so they've been raising a lot of money recently so really interesting to see what they're doing what was some of the studios they bought fuse box games ear this year which UK studio and I want to say poker bizar was the other one they

bought for well sorry invested in for 10 million so lots going on there lastly real quick still front secures $78 million in successful Bond issuance and codex has secured 1 million euros to drive growth and expand its project management tool that's again like a lot of money kind of flowing around the industry but at the same time as kind of layoffs feels like they've been picking up at the end of the right I've spoken for ages sorry everyone I had a few RS of me um Aaron what have you got for us yeah so first up for me so local th Indie card game batro has now made almost 4.4 million just on mobile that's based on at Magic estimates and so it's been out for two months on mobile now um and uh part of

yeah surpassing the 4 million Milestone is thanks to a surge that began on November 18th which notably was the same day as its nomination at the game awards or at least it being publicly revealed that it was nominated and that began a turnaround of like a six week decline in in revenue on mobile so because the game has no ads or in purchases so it revenue is like entirely reliant on finding new people who you know discover the game and install it so yeah it's it's biggest week was understandably it's launch week and then Revenue had been going down since there so even if all those people are still playing it again they're relying on new people installing to keep making money but yeah it's not nominations for like Game of the Year and best mobile

game yeah surely helped it gain some new interest it's yeah too much of a coincidence otherwise that it suddenly had this big Revenue Surge and so yeah the week of starting the 18th of November was it second best to date after the launch week in terms of Revenue and so also that means second best for downloads as well because the two are very strictly linked it is on Apple arcade as well so people can get it for free there but um yeah clearly this has been a good bit of promotion for the game it's nominations helped it made some more money yeah they did a really good job of um getting the game out on mobile pretty quick uh rather than kind of getting beaten by someone else it's just amazing to think that obviously like if you could argue was to

play maybe you would make 4.4 million and and lo more the start of the guns and 4.4 million gross for premium games it's really well done and I guess you know give it another year possibly go to double figures so uh yeah congrats next from me so Pokemon has set a Guinness world record for the longest unboxing live stream video that was done with help from content creators across Europe so they had a 24hour marathon of opening up over 1,500 card packs this is the physical cards and so they opened roughly 20,000 cards over that 24 hours they also opened other like license merchandise and things but the cards were sort of the main focus and they're all being donated to Charities across Europe and

going to be put into nice binders and stuff and distributed um so obviously this is like a good nice thing for them to do while getting a world record out of it and although it's the physical cards obviously the timing is quite it seems quite purposeful following a Pokemon Trading Card Game pocket last month it's absolutely a publicity stud you you don't you don't try and get a Guinness World Record for any other reason yeah so yeah not that it seems like pocket needs the um the extra publicity and whatever Revenue might come from it but um yeah you said it's sort of it seems very intentionally timed and obviously yeah it is good there donating them to charity and stuff and they're not just you know it's not entirely self-serving but yeah be interested see whether it does actually make any

noticeable difference to pocket's revenue like over the next few days or or longer I doubt I kind of doubt it'll make it'll move the needle at all I guess it's just a general marketing thing for Pokemon at the same time as this bit of a publicity start but can't imagine it move the revenue significantly but I guess it just becomes part of a broader marketing and then so the last one from me is Monster Hunter now so I fit in Pokemon and Monster Hunter today it's a good podcast so um yeah monst center now has surpassed 250 million in lifetime gross revenue across Google Play and the App Store so again that's according to app magic so it's currently at 21.7 million to be exact which means it's made 26.7 million since the anniversary in September total earnings are likely higher when including their web shop sales but ter it looks like on the app stores at least Revenue has

declined since the anniversary aside for a brief Spike during their Carnival Global event when they sold tickets for players to participate in like a weekend long event with exclusive monsters and weapons and stuff so they had a small Spike then at the start of November but um overall Revenue has been going down but obviously still a good Milestone to hit the 250 million a quarter of the way to billion now and um I suspect revenue is going to increase again in a couple of weeks because December 12th is the launch of season 4 so Monster Hunter now does these like quarterly major updates which they call Seasons which introduce a bunch of new monsters and usually a new weapon type um and they launch a new season pass which I think is quite popular uh so you you buy it and then get extra rewards and materials as you play the game um so their biggest like quarterly

launch so far was season two and daily revenue spiked by almost 300% on the 13th of June when season 2 started so yeah up by almost 300% compared to June 12 and then it maintained like an increase in Daily spending for the for the rest of June and only dropped down to like pre update levels in July and each of these season updates so far has had relatively sustained boosts for like well over a week say in season 2's case two or three weeks so yeah I suspect it will get another surge in like mid December but it'll be interesting to see how much of a different season 4 makes or whether season 2 was kind of an exception being in the summer time with it being kind of a walking based game but yeah one more point on that they're introducing T-Rex which is one

of my favorite monsters so I'm I'm looking forward to that um so it be a good update for me however much it makes I um I just looking at Magic so it looks like I don't know this but it looks like November probably be its worst month today it looks like it and then I just kind of for after your comment about oh yeah like it's not like the summer they launched the game in September the lost game in what sorry what did they lost yeah September 23 that's kind of a mental time yeah like just missed the PE being outdo it just yeah missing like the peak of Summer now start getting cold it's our location based game go outside get in the rain I mean it obviously works because in October net revenue well I think you just went through some numbers but uh yeah net revenue was like 9 mil anyway yeah right um thanks very much

for that so we're going to move swiftly on to the weekend view section um this week so I wrote an article about you know Royal kingdoms here but how are the new hits kind of re reshaping the top grossing mobile games charts so obviously dream games we spoke about last week released Royal Kingdom was it in its first four days $450,000 I think somewhere so it's a pretty it's a it's a pretty good it's a pretty strong launch I I would say and all kind of like I guess like indication sorry point to that it's going to be a pretty successful game again we'll just see over the coming weeks and months how it's looking but it looks strong but I guess yeah the point I I kind of wanted to make is that obviously the top charts the thing in Mobile the big stereotype is that they really change if at all and to agree that is still true so you

still have 10 Seto Kings ranking at number one like forever and then pubg Mobile's up there Roblox candy cr Saga still up there Quin Quin Master still up there but I just wonder if they're actually changing so uh obviously I've previously done I news that are on like I call it Mobile gaming secret or not so secret Blockbusters if you agree with that or not but games that are make hundreds of millions or even billions but people still think but it's the same old games right it's kind of I feel like it's not and so Monopoly go one of the is now one of the it's in the top 10 already released last year already made billions and we did that we looked at the data they just estimates for only app store Google Play spent as well so not web shops Etc Revenue declined 58% from its peak time revenue and it was still one of the top 10 games for that

MTH so that that's how big this new game is so that's not an old St W right that's a new big new top grossing game and then there were three others in the top 10 so far this year so that includes M go so we've got first Fun's last war which ranks six centy games's Forex strategy title white out survival in E and next on 10 C DD fighter mobile DD fighter mobile which ranks at number nine uh another interesting thing about J fighter is the revenue is absolutely tanked by the way I think tank to a point where most people will still be very happy with that but like it's quite shocking actually it's almost and I've said this before as well games they launched in China had this massive launch and then it's it's it's quite amazing how quickly they Decline and then just disappear off the face of the Earth was huge when it came out wasn't it like yeah yeah crazy Revenue well it's

already yeah it's number n Revenue generating Game of the Year That's not including a third party Android Revenue in China so I mean that would just be that would raise it significantly higher what what's the multile on that like three four times possibly so very successful game but has kind of crashed and then if you look out further outside of the top 10 obviously it's 2018 release and maybe a bit against my point but brawl Stars kind of had a Resurgence right so that ranks 11th so far this year for Revenue which is amazing old title but technically new it's wasn't one of the typical top grossers honai star rail that launched last year it feels like that launched years ago last year that rank 12 Joy nice games they're also known as Joy net games their title legend of mushrooms since at 17th so far this year there are

other kind of breakthroughs as well that you know that aren't like top top top but they're doing very well so konami's e football Al but it's having its best year ever in 20124 when I looked at it for the for this article it hit more than $358 million in gross revenue that You' then got paper games's love and deep space uh which has been a rare consistent success in China and then now kind of bringing you bat of Royal Kingdom you got that coming out maybe that's a future top well who know top 50 30 20 10 grossing game uh we'll see Pokemon trading C game pocket which be talking about surpassed 100 million in its first 17 days that's very successful will we see that continue we don't know but again if feel like as much as the mobile market stays

the same it's also changing in terms of the top games and I feel like there's actually been quite a lot in a short amount of time recently whether you compare that to privacy changes and other trends that have happened that have helped this happen or people ready for new games I don't know something to kind of think a bit more about yeah the whole point anyway the point is I I feel like the mobile market has changed quite a lot that kind of notion that is always the same isn't necessarily true anymore so that's my uh so that's my week views so Aaron what have you got to round us out yeah so I think yours leads quite nicely into M this week actually uh in terms of a relatively new game that's done quite well yeah reverse 1999 um by Blue uh it celebrated its first anniversary uh last month and it's

made uh just over 100 million since Going Global last October based on at Magic estimates again and so I spoke with the development team at Blac about um basically how the game has carved out its own little niche in the the gatcha market and um in particular it's got a very unique character design that do stand out in my opinion compared to a lot of other like anime capture games um they've really gone for quite a a bizarre approach instead of the um kind of Fairly common like sexualized character nature that many anime style games go for um so like in Reverse 1999 one of the First characters you encounter is a talking Apple who floats around and wears a bow tie and his name

is Apple so you know that's that's quite far from a sex anime girl yeah so yeah i' I'd recommend reading the full article because the development team did go quite in depth on like how they go about designing and fleshing out the characters but a kind of short summary yeah they they do sort of draw a lot of inspiration particularly from like 20th century events cuz the whole game is kind of a time travel story where everything kind of goes backwards just before the year 2000 starts so it goes through all sorts of events and culturally significant moments around the world and you got characters who have like backgrounds in the starszy OR stuff from like the Wall Street Crash in America the SSR there's all sorts of stuff from all over the world and you know these characters drawing inspiration and their

backgrounds from different events so it is quite a a novel g game in that regard and that it's clearly working because obviously gates are usually built around trying to get people to spend to get the new characters so doing that without any pre-established IP is one thing but yeah doing it where you're also not trying to sell them just on like sex appeal is been quite a a novel thing I think for the for an anime capture type game and again it seems to be working you know they've hit the 100 million figure based on that magic and um yeah I say I'd recommend everyone goes and reads it it was a really interesting feature so just for anyone that reads it so sometimes it's actually it's fairly common I thought it wasn't so much these days but sometimes when speaking with companies in in China

specifically I'm not sure other Asian countries sub sometimes but more so China they don't like to give you the names of the staff that you're talking to or even if you speak to someone they try and say like we don't want to tell you who they are or they'll give you like a first name um I'm not I think part of the reason is because of I don't know this specific case but I think part of the reason is generally is that they don't want people poaching stuff uh other companies poaching stuff so they kind of keep that under locking key and probably is partly as as to gu it's probably partly to do with messaging just keep it more corporate rather than individuals I remember I say I used to have 10 cent I did an interview with someone at 10 cent I knew who it was and then afterwards they went can you just run that as this I like no they said so can you run it as a 10 set spokesperson so I'm not doing a one-on-one interview this was like the team right

but I'm not doing a one-on-one interview I never published it was very happy about that but I get it it's just different different cult thing but interesting anyway more importantly on the game so if you've played the game right yeah yeah it is quite quite fun do they take uh because you you said like the stars Z and like it seems like they actually tackle quite important topics difficult Topics in history do they do they treat it like with respect say it's I wouldn't say it's disrespectful but it's not incredibly deep and depressing it's more so yeah to do with the characters and your when you like summon them you and find out more about them they'll talk about or have you know information about them that you can access that tells you this is their background and it kind of feeds you into the design and how they look and stuff but it's not super in

depth at least from what I've played yeah it doesn't go too deep into all the depressing stuff that actually went on during those times and then the the art Stars interesting like I mean one of the Lucy's ban like that is clearly sexualized as anime and I know that kind of comes with anime I'm not necessarily critici it to be honest at all I I enjoy anime some I think when things are overly sexualized a lot I it gets a bit cringe for me personally but actually a lot of the designs though yeah I think to your point they're actually they're not like that it's definitely a different kind of approach yeah so it's quite interesting yeah I I guess some of them are but yeah it's far from all of them and then like you've got last year they released a banner which was just like a dog you could summon I so you got like the floating

apple and stuff so it's more varied than a lot of game no interesting interesting to get insights on that yeah really really fascinating piece right so thanks for that that brings us to the end of The Weekly mobile games so thank you everybody for listening thank you Aaron for all your VI insights today we'll see you all again next week have a great weekend goodbye