Week in Mobile Games E40 - Games industry trends 2024 review

[Music] hello welcome to the pocketgamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the big news of the week and provide some insights I'm Craig Chapel head of coner at pocketgamer.biz uh we're having a bit of a festive Edition today we're all we're all in Christmas jumpers and clothing if your audio listeners will explain welcome uh to the podcast for this week page editor and Aaron assel our news editor how you both doing Paige how what you been up to yeah I'm good been a busy week it's my last full working week of the year which sounds a bit crazy but yeah it's come around very quickly I was supposed to go to my first like Christmas Market at the weekend because my partner had uh family visiting but there was a really bad storm so there was no Christmas Market we made do anyway it was nice but yeah just getting in the festive Spirit now I think well I say that I'm sat here in a

Santa hat so I'm definitely in the FES of spirit very much in the FES of spirit and what what what's your Christmas jumper it was just a normal one it has got like it has got little reindeers on it but I was like you can't see it enough so I put the hat on looking very festive inde deeds and and AR what you've been up to I like your shirt yeah thank you I was just saying it's it's the first time I've ever worn this shirt so I hope everyone feels um how long have you had it privilege not very long to be fair there's just not been an occasion yet I say some of them I've had for years but you've had it for years some of my Christmasy ones I've had for years and they have been worn possibly once I don't wear Christmas and stuff very often but I thought you know what better time to start than on the pocketgamer.biz Christmas podcast indeed but yeah so I've been quite busy getting geared up for Christmas feel really quite behind this year still don't have the tree up no deorations feel very sort of

accidentally Scrooge this year I'm too busy doing all the present stuff to anything else organized get in there gradually too busy being practical Aon that's yeah that's a nice way of you know you know all that other stuff can wait you got you're thinking you're thinking of other people yeah exactly and you're off for a well ear holiday as well from from uh next week as well so that's plenty of time hopefully yeah the tree should be up before Christmas Eve this year and as myself so my cat was going to join us on the podcast and as soon as it came to me Gizmo's like n actually I've I've had enough this week I played Dungeons and Dragons believe it or not for the first time ever so that was hosted by Oscar Clark who's been on the show a couple times and uh that was really fun actually at first I was kind of actually a bit nervous most people have played it before as a small there's a group of with us and I don't really know what I'm

doing at all I couldn't even like log in to D be at first but and then as we basically we were charged with protecting a museum at night that was the the story and whilst we were in there we end up opening all the doors setting off all the alarms we ended up fighting this these like smoke demons or something and everyone was trying to B fight them with an axe a sword and I was like oh hang on there must be something in this room we can't just keep trying to fight like air with swords so I I thought I was quite clever and I managed to find a gem and then there was a clue and all I had to do I think I could have even said out loud to people these free words like oh everyone it says this and then that would have like won the day I didn't do that and so in that world no one actually knew what the clue was for starters and then I got knocked out so the game went on for half hour longer than it needed to thankfully someone managed to a third person picked up the game cuz second one did forgot what the clue was who was right next to me anyway

d d very sounds like a success yeah and uh it was good fun and also in the Christmas spirit if you can't see I'm wearing a uh a Christmas jumper there Star Wars fiend says Mery sius right this a very nice jumper thank you thank you we're all in the festive spirit I love it right so a few shout outs before we start next so this year's been a really good year for you know our events and but we're doing plenty next year so really quick PGC London our biggest one January 20th to 21st and then we go to San Francisco for PGC March 17th to 18th the Dubai game Expo Summits May 7th May 8th we're doing Barcelona for the first time in June dates TBC PGC Helsinki October 7th to 8th and there there may we may do some other stuff as well because we're not busy enough and then also uh at London we're going to be doing our well I said before we're doing a top 30 UK game makers list we now turn that into our top 50 game

makers list we're working on that we'll announce it at the show that's enough Shilling this week instead of like I said actually doing the week's news news has actually been fairly quiet other than uh Zinger sold chart boost to Loop me which was which is an interesting deal they bought that a few years ago I want to say they bought it for 250 million and then eventually they get bought by takee 2 it was an interesting deal because of uh data companies kind of merging with publishes like one way or the other I'm wondering if that's we're seeing those split apart a bit more now because I think app lov's probably going to break up a little bit by the sound of it uh we'll see so could be there could be a trend for next year but but this year so for this podcast we're going to focus on what are like some of the big trends of the past year uh we're going to go through a bunch of those one quick start before we jump to Aaron with the first big trend is that technically it's a big trend the industry is back to growth this year

overall uh we we'll kind of go a bit more into detail on you know maybe not not everyone's feeling that but importantly the mobile games industry apps on Google Play Revenue it's growing again so in the first 11 months of the year the sector grew by 5.3% according to at Magic estimates to $ 54.6 billion in net revenue uh and that's about $78 billion gross revenue and that still leaves another month so yeah good news after it's been a difficult couple of years but Aaron you've got some interesting insights into how the industry's been growing what's been changing yeah so um yeah I wanted to talk about sort of changes in the top grossing games list particularly um so while like honor of Kings has remained on top overall in 2024 three games have entered the top 10 this year according to at Magic uh those being last war Survivor white out

survival and dungeon and fighter mobile the latter being the only like brand new game from this year it released in in China so yeah there's been a few kind of movements in that top 10 list yeah one new entry in there slightly less movement than last year so in 2023 four new games entered top 10 gring lists that was Royal match Monopoly Go honkai Star Rail and Garden skates obviously Monopoly go and honar were both new but entirely new games last year four new games end of last year some of them have fallen back out like honai Star rail is no longer in the top 10 I believe it's 12th now but yeah a newcomer in Dungeon and fighter mobile and yeah so decrease from last year but also an increase over 20122 when only two games entered the top 10 list and they ranked ninth and 10

uh which was Monster Strike and homescap and neither of those were new releases yeah the past two years there's been at least one game that is brand new to that year that's made it into the top 10 which I think is quite noteworthy um shows there's still room to reach players with new games and perhaps more importantly that newer games even if they aren't brand new and kind of Rise year on year and make it up to those charts or tops of the charts at the same time it's sort of noteworthy that besides dungeon and fighter which I say is um has done really well in China RPGs have sort of fallen off yeah honai star rail is no longer in the top 10 genin impact isn't in the top 10 zenone zero obviously Hoya versus new release that didn't break into the top 10 so it yeah does seem like RPGs have kind of been on the decline and instead we sort of seeing a bit of a rise for the strategy genre I said white out survival

moved up into the top 10 list it's 8th at the moment and notably last war Survivor is at 530 places from where it ranked in 2023 and it's now in s which is obviously a huge increase um done very well and yeah so one final kind of subject within this that I wanted to have was yeah dungeon and fighter mobile is really the big hit of the year um it's the only new game released to surpass a billion on iOS and I think it was last week we was saying it could well have hit two billion or more when factoring in like Android stores in China but there have been other games that have done really well this year even if they're not in the top 10 against all the kind of Legacy Giants so like Joy nice Games legend of mushroom was the second biggest new release so that launched globally in March and it's

made about half a billion so far so obviously quite far behind dungeon and fighter but still half a billion very good going but it does seem this year like you really needed to be an Asian company to get anywhere really in these kind of higher rankings I've got a feature in progress at the moment which may be out by the time this podcast goes live but in short the top 10 like brand new games that released this year were all developed in China in Asia sorry not just China but in like Japan Korea yeah they're all Asian and it's um the only company to have released a game in the top 15 the supercell and that was with Squad Busters which ranked 14 so there were no other Western game developers in the top 15 like new games this year which is quite noteworthy I think I find that uh just a mad

statist like a data point I guess and super obviously owned by a 10cent anyway so technically technically a subsidiary but yeah I I remember I had this chat with uh someone at GDC they were kind of investor in and either currently worked or had been working with a top publisher there they get some interesting viewpoints they were actually talking more about AAA um but I guess it kind of feeds into this which would is that Western companies in their point in their view they are going to really struggle to compete now even more so with companies in Asia particularly China because now that they've got to the level where these are actually like proper kind of Call of Duty style like Call of Duty level kind of what you think of when you think of a triple A game and they can put mean like thousands of workers to work on that and you can't actually replicate

that cost you can't replicate that team size and that cost structure in the west right now you know particular if you've got a studio based in San Francisco like good luck and I think and I'm not here to say that these things are right or wrong but there's there is obviously and it's controversial in China you know the working culture which is what is it like 9 to9 kind of 67 days a week you you're you're working not not saying that's everywhere but that's like one of the kind of controversial things that's kind of been in the news and again you can't you can't really compete with that in the west especially with this kind of people talking about Crunch and obviously the big issues so yeah I think I guess we'll see more of this in future and obviously a lot of these Chinese Publishers also just very cashr and can invest a lot and have found a way to find global success and and maybe this is actually a sign

just the last thing of a lot of the creativity maybe is happening in Asia in China I think as well on that creativity point it's um worth noting a lot of the the sort of top top 10 top 15 games that I'm covering in this feature that I'm working on quite a lot of them are new IPS so obviously there is more kind of creativity in making a brand new thing and then they've gone on to find success without the Brand Power of something that came before them like in the top five of the year um I think dungeon and fighter and Pokemon Trading Card Game pocket were the only like pre-existing IPS to my knowledge the others are Legend of mushroom love and deep space and zenone zero again although like hoyo verse is kind of a brand in itself at this point with with genin and on coar rail zenone zero is technically in new IP doing its own thing yeah I think the

creativity point is quite a strong one there but yeah there are a lot of games that are doing well that are kind of forming their own IPS and actually you think about end of year the the top some of the top new releases I guess firstly Royal Kingdom is top new release potentially obviously that's not Asia that's uh from the tury turkey developer dream games but what are the other big games that have come out mentioned Pokemon TC G that's Japan or DNA Delta Force potentially could be could be a big game crossplatform 10 cent you've got Infinity Nikki in Fault big big release Asia and Marvel Rivals not mobile but that's out that's Asia as well I believe so yeah everywhere kind of crossplatform not so much currently in the west really interesting so thanks for that Aaron so we're going to uh go to a slightly more depressing topic but uh Paige uh what what have you got for Trends so

first up from me is it's a bit of a depressing one but I don't think we can talk about 20124 and Trends and not mention obviously layoffs which we have had so many this year I know we had some you know in the last few years but this year in particular we've had a lot there's been you know plka Microsoft Sony EA un I think when I was looking through the list like there there's just unfortun there's too many to go through um with each kind of one obviously you get get the sort of statement of you know there's some sort of restructuring in place whether that's down to you know back from obviously a lot of company sort of had massive expansions over the pandemic and now it's catching up we've got Rising costs we've got you know the just players and how they spend that's changing so yeah there there's just been you know a whole host of reasons that are Behind These layoffs um and I think like one of the things for me as well is obviously layoffs are awful and people their jobs but I think it's just a wider

thing as well because those that lose their jobs you then run the risk of them going into completely different Industries they just look completely outside of games and we lose a bunch of talent and then there's also the risk that the people that keep their jobs just because they've kept them it doesn't mean that they feel secure so yeah I just think that it's been one of those years that you know it just it's felt very unstable and you know you can't help but you know feel for so many people and then just think you know it it just feels like it's kind of on Shaky Ground I know we've mentioned quite a few times on the podcast about this whole survive to 25 thing I would like to think that that's what we need to do and we're nearly there um but I do think you know we're not going to get to 2025 and all of a sudden all of the bad things stop there may still be some layoffs but I hope for the most part that the worst of it is behind us and sort of 20 25 can at least be the

beginning of the year that a lot of these companies start to maybe rebuild and find a way for sustainable growth that lasts for the long term now yeah hopefully like some of the big Publishers they've kind of completed their layoffs the Ubisoft situation who who knows what's going to happen there that could get worse just because the state of taking potentially taking it private and whatever that means for the changes that they want to enforce I feel like towards the end of the like 2024 was supposed to be the year that things kind of got better initially right and and that that that did not happen or the industry is coming back to growth as we said but I I think think yeah not everyone's feeling that right and then towards the end of the year we just ended up seeing more and more layoffs it felt like but interestingly at the same time we spoke to Michael Meer from drar partners and obviously if you look at the data and we were reporting lots of stories about Investments and funding seems to be slowly picking up I think there's certain stages of investment but is still tremendously

difficult but there is a pick up there and maybe into 2025 and we've seen some funds raised quite a lot of money play Ventures I think raised I want to say 140 million uh to to to deploy there's a lot of money coming out of the Middle East insiding the UAE there's a lot of money slushing around and there's other funds and some startups like X supercell startups been picking up some money bit odd raised 17 18 million Umar keeps buying everyone well there there's there's things happening we'll see if that continues into next year to get back but to get back to the layoffs Point hopefully that is part of the recovery next year so one of the things I wanted to talk about was AI which I maybe kind of feeds into the the layoff stuff but I feel like AI I mean everybody's obviously been talking about it this year generative AI in particular it's a trend that's kind of been in a

way in games bubbling under somewhat feels a bit like web fre in the metaverse the moment but how do I put it not as as bad or as Buzzy as that by that I mean you know again like like w metaverse there's a lot of startups in development on the tech side trying to use J of AI I think there ultimately are some practical uses whatever I think of C gbt I'll get into that on something else a bit later but But ultimately there are some practical uses even if they they could be fairly simple or or they just help you get information elsewhere we kind of see like applo in kind of calling out AI in the UA space and I think in UA that is a kind of for ad creatives that's becoming quite an interesting tool I've definitely noticed games in soft launch that have curious imagery and app ions that are most definitely AI generated and I remember there was one in particular might be laugh it's a farming

game and you can tell just by the eyes they're like really off and I think some of the animals in the backgrounds just looks um like suffing from Fallout John Wright we asked for his predictions so next year we're going to ride predictions podcast but he said he thinks at least 50% of a game will be made with AI next year was that like a top game I think that he was saying uh and I think there's definitely already been some use of AI already and maybe that has already been leading two layoffs that could be playing a part I think as much as people have been saying no it's to improve like efficiencies so people we won't uh lay off people or keep hiring just means you could do more it's like is that really what we're saying like if you're an executive there I don't think you're thinking of these amazing tools and be like oh well now we can just hire more people to make even bigger games I doubt I feel that's a bit disingenuous when I hear that but the other big thing about AI that's kind of been a Trends and you can see the

controversy around it is obviously the SAG after strikes so voice actors are striking at the moment and specifically it's about the use of AI and protecting people's work and I think the fact that Publishers haven't relented is telling so it kind of goes back to my point about costs like if you don't have to pay constantly to get someone into the recording studio and pay their royalties after as well Etc if you don't have to do any of that you get them once copy their voice and you've got that forever it will cut costs right and I and I think that I I don't know what the Publishers are are thinking but as a guess that's got part of it and I think obviously with some top top triaa games you'll get actors kind of coming in doing doing their performances no matter what happens say with this deal yeah for side like for side small side characters on side quests I could see the I see why Publishers kind of want to take advantage of this technology

oh I it's an interesting Trend I think we as John W kind of said I think we're GNA see more of that potentially next year be interesting to see if AI has reached its apex already generative AI tools specifically it's got to reach this Apex already I heard this term it's like mad currently for like chat for a text based at least it's kind of like mad cow disease so they could they spent years ripping off all of these websites for all of the data that they're worth didn't pay anyone off and then now they're kind of learning from each other and so you might end up getting some really warped results for chat there I want to say in a bit Yeah I think that's AI has been an interesting Trend this year but what I think we'll see more next year I don't think it's a trend that's going anywhere it's more just a case of how it kind of evolves I guess yeah yeah for sure funnily enough with the AI like voice actor stuff um there was a a trailer for some new characters come into Fire Emblem Heroes which I

play been playing it for nearly eight years which is a bit crazy but one of those the the normal voice actor of one of the characters I think is part of the stripes so they've just left the Japanese voice in at the moment and just said they're going to replace it basically when the voice actress comes back which is a bit weird but um yeah so I don't know if that's kind of a sign at with a game like that that they can just carry on without them which is a bit depressing if so it's but it's definitely having an impact because you noticed that as a player right you're not supposed to notice these things so uh Aaron you've got uh another trend for us with regulatory changes yeah so particularly the digital markets act which came into effect across the EU was March 7th this year that it came in um so obviously you know it was quite big news at the time ultimately it still

feels kind of unclear how much of an impact um it's really had so far a survey by Agony back in March found that a third of developers were already implementing changes at that time right in preparation for the dma but only 9% were actually confident that the dma would mean they'd ultimately get to keep more revenue and yeah like nine months later I don't really feel like there have been any ground groundbreaking consequences from the dma like we've talked before Microsoft still kind of seems like they're faffing around with the Xbox App Store epic games store had 10 million downloads on mobile the the last we got an update on that and obviously web shops have becoming a bigger thing like 100% of the top Social Casino games have a web shop now according to app chart obviously that was a trend we were starting to see for

the dma even if it's sort of scaled up since then so yeah obviously it has been it's been a major thing this year that still feels very much sort of in its infancy as to what impact it's really going to have I think the dma is it's already making a difference I think in just in terms of I think cuz obviously Apple keeps appealing or just not seemingly not really complying to what I think what the law wants to achieve and so the the European commission is always playing kind of is still constantly kind of playing catchup and apple seems to change its rules they get more absurd each time think newsl on I don't actually I I don't understand some of it if I G to my head I wouldn't be able to tell you unless I read it uh some of the the later changes that they made I remember I I spent like an hour just looking at when I was trying to report it last time like what does this mean but anyway I think like the there's just been like this year there's

just been a lot more significant chinks in the armor I guess and of of of the big platforms and the result of that so far I think is that Xbox I don't know what I don't know what on Earth Xbox is doing but they are at least allegedly preparing a Marketplace maybe they wouldn't be doing that if these things weren't in motion um epic obviously it's been fighting its fight and it's had a setback in the US so Google was ruled to be an illegal Monopoly but Google play but that's the injunction on that has now been stayed I think is it whilst an appeal goes through I think is is the latest on that but you know they've ultimately the de but back in Europe the GMA has allowed them to in some in some form ridiculous charges that Apple sets to to release a store to get and like you said get 10 million downloads again wouldn't have been able to do that realistically a couple years ago so these it doesn't

feel like it I think by the time you get to the end of the year but if you actually think where we were two years ago I'd say it's a pretty significant Trend there's other mobile marketplaces that have launched or are launching and I think the word is out now on I mean it's been up long time but just how much money you can potentially make not saying this is a growth area really but it's making more money from the players that you got from web stores I again it all kind of pushes that way and developers at least all things been opening up been found ways to get their communities to kind of go to their own stores anyway so I'd say it's been overall I don't think it's where people want it to be at all and it could take a it could take years still for like Apple and Google to really open up fully to third party stores without extra fees to get away from the 30% Etc um but we've come a long way and I think a lot has happened so next up page you've got

another trend for us I wanted to talk about crossplatform because obviously you know crossplatform games they've been a thing for a while it's not like it's this new thing but I do feel like in 2024 we've seen it sort of you know accelerate even more particularly in Mobile you know there's a lot more games now that release on mobile that from the get-go also on another platform you know whether it's console or PC and even if they don't release straight away it might be you know it's mobile first and then you know within 6 months or so they release it over PC as well you know a lot of what we were just talking about as well with obviously you know regulation changes across mobile I think it has just been that option of well let's just release elsewhere as well so we can kind of sidestep some of these issues that we're seeing but yeah I think that it's an interesting Trend it's one I personally as a gamer I'm also a fan of you know Gamers we want we want convenience you know more accessibility it's part of the reason why mob M is so popular because it's just it's easy so you know think with

like Infinity Nikki it's great that that's on mobile you can sort of Chip Away it on there and then you know if you want to go on your PS5 you can pick up the experience there so yeah I think that you know this year we've seen more of it cat you can't put a cat in front of the camera and me not be like cat so oh no sorry to interrupt yeah gizmo has has appeared I got very distracted because there's a cute cat on the screen he's not wearing something Christmasy though Gizmo Gizmo is not wearing his Christmas jump for but yeah um anyway back from my distraction I think that next year we'll see more games that release crossplatform I do kind of think that as time goes on it it is going to be one of those things that is less of a a quirky feature that you have and maybe more of a necessity like I said gamers are kind of greedy we want to play everything everywhere on all of the devices that we own so yeah you know it's kind of how like with like cross progression and games and you know crossplay know years ago you would have never thought playing Call of Duty

against if you're on Playstation you wouldn't have thought about playing it against Xbox whereas now if it didn't have that everyone would kind of be outraged by it so I do kind of wonder if crossplatform will go a similar way people will just expect a game comes out and they can play it where they want to and then you know cloud gaming things like that adds a whole another level to it that's a different Trend in of itself but yeah obviously there's you know challenges that come with developing for platform there's a lot more you have to factor in but I think that it is just going to continue to be bigger as the years go on yeah I think it's it's been a major Trend and that it's notable that some of the recent games that we were just talking about earlier Infinity Nikki is is a crossplatform obviously gen impact on K sty ra crossplatform Delta Force is going to be available on mobile I think it's already available in China believe it's out now PC maybe consoles J I want to say January 20th I made that number up but I think that's

the number that's in my head as well that is coming out of mobile so getting another crossplatform it seems to be for those that can do it a really interesting option cloud gaming yeah that I I I don't think that's much of a trend at all for games at the moment I wouldn't even say that's prediction for 2025 to be honest all right thanks for that page so there's a few that I wanted to do I guess I'm going to be picky I'm not going to be I'm going to go through some very quickly and then one that I kind of wanted to just talk about just because so very quickly one of the trends of the Year hybrid casual now I guess go back to a couple years ago the debate of is hyper casual dead is it dying it was dying because of the Privacy changes made it very difficult to kind of get the scale you need and generate the ad Revenue it kind of just basically destroyed that model um so income hybrid casual that we said

on this podcast before my opinion is well it came from popularized I guess from ja arero that's where hybrid casual comes from as a term in the industry and so now you've just tried to make this a thing after years of it not working by the way no one could replicate it and suddenly hyper casual is dead and you're like oh man better make this a thing turns out baby there've been very good successes so Voodoo SE games some others happy years back now with Karo they've really forced this thing into existence so far succeeded so that was been a really interesting trend of the year and actually the interesting thing about hyper casual we spoke about the rise of strategy games earlier and last war really effectively combined hyper casual gameplay so the gating I think I think it's the gating mechanics at the start which you see in

a lot of ads now which are really interesting to watch for some reason um most you because the failure thing and you think you can do better BL um but they added that as like a core gameplay Loop and then they bring you into the bit that makes them the money from inet purchases which is the 4ex strategy and the combination of that did well so there's been a very big evolution of hyper casual either using those gameplay elements to also help bring in users and monetize these other games that's one Trend the other trend is hybrid casual I was at think gaming is I've gone on this this topic for too long I was going to do this I was at think gaming Istanbul uh earlier this year and then it was just a great show and then I apologize I can't remember the name of it but it was hosted by two and a half Gamers they did a they did an evening uh kind of summit get together networking and a few talks really insightful interesting one of the things

and I think mat and Yak specifically were talking about you can kind of use developers could be launching maybe have been launch a hyper casual game see how it does but with the mind of you know that you can kind of develop this idea further and and then so you start developing it hyper casual and then you might eventually after a long time bring it up into another genre as we would Define it but into casual to midore so that's been an interesting Trend this year and I think we'll see more of that next year and then I I'll try and do these ones quick I wrote a piece earlier this year everything is games platform which is definitely true I've actually got very well sucked into New York Times games now on web I actually can't get enough connections really annoys me though because it's very us focused so sometimes I don't know what this is but a friend of mine got me into that so I play that strand letter boxed word obviously and yeah really good and then obviously LinkedIn became a games platform Discord became a games platform again we'll see if any of these stick

with it uh I've said before about how big platforms especially social platforms they think we already have lots of users here's another way to engage them and make money so well Facebook instag games is back I was about to criticize it is now back because MSA rules kind of gets all bit better but Facebook kind of steps away now they're back just because actually I guess regulation maybe Apple's kind of opening up Discord sold games left it now they're having games on the actual platform really snap when games left it haven't come back but yeah everything is games platform telegram is and and browser gaming HTML 5 is probably the big thing this year one of the major Trends telegram has just exploded into life so we'll be reporting more on that and I think next year could be big I think one of the issues is that potentially a lot of the usage that you see from games you see numbers like tens of millions are playing this but maybe like a sign ific proportion of those are actually bots so how popular actually is

for games popular enough I think yeah HTML 5's rise I I I remember reporting on it over a decade ago maybe 12 years ago of how it was going to be a thing never happened and now it's here exciting it's probably part of a push away from the platform holders as well big Trend our Publishers leaving games behind I've got two more trads everyone don't worry our publish Le engaged behind I just found the concept interesting that the biggest Publishers of the world are expanding away so EA has got the EA Sports app which is like kind of catching up on your football scores and your teams and I think they just want to build a community within that which is away from their actual big uh and I forgot the name of it again FC Sports FIFA U I don't know I can't my brain just can't accept this EA Sports FC something something so they kind of got away from that and into this other area which we'll see if it does well uh but it's a really it's it's a f fasinating idea and then you've had Crafton

investing can't remember the money now 60 7080 million into spoon Labs which has a live streaming and podcast platform spoon and launched a short short form video service Vigo uh that's their largest investment into a non-gaming company so Crafton makes pubg now they're doing short video remember quibby apparently it's actually popular in China again just another company doing that Voodoo has two social apps acquired be real um this year I got games which does Lords mobile they they didn't say they say apps is a major growth driver then say the name which I believe is the link messaging platform that they have and then Pokemon to Pokemon sleep um technically not a game lots of things going on so I think that's been an interesting trend from some companies maybe we'll see more of that you know we're already seeing trans media that was a big trend forgot that one TR media is a big thing this year

and I feel like this feeds into that right last one this is one that I just wanted to talk about um because it's been a big fig recently uh I just wanted to talk about like the state of games media I guess particularly B2B so in the UK I used to work so I used to work on develop magazine and the assist magazine was MCV so MCV was like a trade week for retail that sort of evolved into doing more for Publishers develop was very much game development think of like gavasa which now game developer kind of like that but hardcore really into the tools Tech programming and then what what's the point I'm trying to make that that they used to be massive Brads they're still going they run like notable events uh not really what they were to be honest games industry. Biz has just lost all of its senior staff so Z Davis the their revenue was down 10% I believe

since 2021 something like that and so they offered voluntary redundancies across the entire company which obviously people have taken up uh ultimately it's it's really bad hey games industry kind of a competitor to us yeah but do I want to see them go away absolutely not we need strong B2B Brands and if there's no suggestion of this currently other than that they're letting all the senior staff leave so they've lost the publisher the editor Chief Deputy editor and other people was one fulltime person they are hiring for a director I think it's just a weird space in the media right now so if I just go quick attempt to quickly go into the history the move from prince online so I guess I joined during this so maybe I don't I probably don't know all the details about it but if I give a very basic comment the move from prin was tough so has not been as lucrative as magazine ads to my knowledge and then with online and recent years another problem the media faces is Google is

basically well they change things all the time and so people kind of try to chase the algorithm with SEO and that and there's debates on that I I don't really like SEO but I think consuma has to do it btb doesn't but they're basically stopping Google being a search engine and it's just more of a moneymaking machine um and it feels like they're just kind of like Facebook has Twitter's absolutely useless it's you've lost some social media outreach Facebook's useless it feels like they're just closing the tap like Facebook did anyway I just wonder what the future here to get users from search engines which is at Google is where you get most of your traffic um you need to start running like UA style uh just to get readers which is there it doesn't seem in any way a sustainable model for that and and really getting off topic a bit but I just thought it was worth noticing because I'm curious how things like chat GPT is going to work in the future especially with their deals with media

publishers to train on their stories and also to kind of exclusively surface information so chat GPT have a deal with um future publishing here the do Edge magazine so I've started to wonder if like if if say chat GPT kind of sort of became the next Google then it seems like your answers one they don't lead to the website secondly they come from Paid Partners so you again it's kind of like paying to appear in search results or they pay money to you and go look we'll get you to appear in our search results hooray but we want all of your stuff to feed our out it's like the maap you're talking this is going to be good for you as as they slowly destroy your company from the inside anyway got a few tangents but media evolved quite a lot and I think about a decade ago the events was kind of the way forward we tried to do that develop and now they have I said some successful events Pocket Gamer obviously got in earlyish and we've been really successful with Pocket Gamer connects and growing next year one of the media trends this year

previous years is kind of splitting off into newsletters smaller sites maybe run by like one person podcasts Etc industry experts are form their own Outlets quite effectively got de constructure fund and nari which I guess part of that like if you're talking about Revenue generation consultancy is probably how they generate a lot of their money and it's also just good for if you're on those just for personal brand it helps you get opportunities so that's their kind of model I guess doesn't work for journalist media out there that because you can't be that close to be a consultant I think what does that leave us I guess I I think if more btb sites disappear it's and I don't think there's a massive pipeline for journalists to replace what's being lost and then I think what happens is that people come in and then they kind of get the site shuts down more recently so they have they're forced to kind of look elsewhere or you just media is not that well paid right you just kind of get sucked into elsewhere it's a massive problem if GI

closed you lose we're going to lose all that history just gone which is insane uh and then some of the issues I this is more prediction now I'll close with this uh kind of where are companies going to promote themselves in future their their services their job vacancies to where they're going to announce their next big thing if you lose the B2B sites there's nowhere to go slim pickings currently and to maybe and maybe they still don't see the value that's obviously a media problem yeah not everyone can just shout about things on LinkedIn to get noticed and all these newsletters that have popped up so every single company Under the Sun runs a newsletter now and they round up the news where are you going to get that where you going to get that news from if all if the B2B sites weren't there or there's not many you're going to have less you're gonna have less to say you won't have nothing to say you still fine yourself s but but point is it's not

good uh anyway I just wanted to have a bit of a moan at the end about the state of media and in the end I obviously would say this man who works in media says please support the media but it is important if you if you want obviously now that's not to say there's not valid criticisms of why these business models don't work and and I can't just say advertise pocket g. Biz or wherever but then the kpis you get are rubbish I don't know on any of these B2B sides to my point so there's things to work out there still but in the end you should really support medor Outlets otherwise you're going to lose them and it's already happening that's my passion I wonder um how much of that is to do with like YouTube as well because I know I get a lot of my kind of news from my interests at least I know it's maybe more consumer but a lot of that is people on YouTube reading articles to me rather than me have to go and find the Articles and read them

myself uh which again isn't sustainable if that means you know those news sources you know there're not getting the viewer figures then to keep themselves going but yeah I do wonder how much that sort of thing does impact it so I think like the whole content creator influencer thing is kind of only getting bigger as far as I know and you know these multi-million subscriber channels where people just go to them because you know they know the face whereas you don't necessarily get that as much with you know a news article other than the little picture and name at the top when you start reading I do wonder how much of it's down to the the more personal connection you get on YouTube even if that is people just reading someone else's new make a very good point less people read now I was literally talking about this at the weekend like people don't read as much now even when you go on an article it will tell you like oh this is going to take you 3 minutes to read or do you

want to read it do you just want to click this button and we'll read it to you like people's lives are busy and people haven't got time to read articles apparently so no I do think like what you said Aaron part of it is also video and even that's evolving it's not just video now it's short videos like people want things given to them in like 30 seconds so yeah I think there is just that little shift in video wanting things very quickly given to you they could be it it could be that I I been slow to react to some things definitely on a personal level and there are other ways to kind of deliver content that sites perhaps are delivering but yeah uh it isn't like to my friends I send them a link and they they call me old I'm the same age they call me old now they're like literally sorry my cats arrived just for the end of the podcast everybody you heard me moaning and he was just like shut up it's been an hour you just spoke for 20 minutes uh I can't remember oh one of my friends

he uh I sent them a link why you send me a link do have time to read just send me a screenshot and they're all start call me olds I was like all right jeez I send links if that helps at all as the yeah the genz representative and what do your friends think of that do they read it or they're like why didn't you just send me the screenshot of the headline I don't know if they end up reading it but they don't P me out just send it in like hologram format like links it's C be something futuristic send it to my VR headset please yeah as a meme as well only yes I think because people like to consume content as well like while they're working as well right you want to just spend the time to read anyway that is an that is a really interesting Trad and and I guess maybe a good one to close out on so that is our final weeky mobile games of the year well thank you everyone for tuning in this year the podcast has grown a lot I don't actually have the stats in front of me thr them on LinkedIn from Spotify wrapped but yeah we've we've grown a lot and we

really appreciate your support and listening we hope you find it interesting as always please do send us feedback anything that we should be changing like in the New Year we can we could always do things differently um so we're just Keen to for for people to say what they think I guess but yeah thank you so much Aaron for being on the podcast this week thanks for having me yeah it's been a a fun year looking forward to doing it all again um January and and thank you very much Paige as well been on this and been a really good year for the show yeah yeah it's been a fun year doing this and we had a nice festive one to end things exactly so uh I I see everyone on the on the infinity Nikki podcast but otherwise for everyone have a great Christmas the rest enjoy the holidays have a good New Year and the week of mobile games will be back in 2025 would you believe and we're going to jump into uh predictions that I think the first one that we'll do next year um so yeah from all of us goodbye it's from

Gizmo he says goodbye and have a good one Merry Christmas Merry Christmas