Will Apple’s NFT Guidelines Kill Crypto Mobile Games? - The Metacast by Naavik

[Music] like how can you like in your right mind not pay any attention to the App Store but you're gonna make meta self freaking giphy like what are you doing like do your job [Music] hi everyone welcome to the metacast Roundtable by navic this is your One Stop podcast to stay up to date with the latest game business news and all their insights and today I'm joined by Anil Des Gupta co-founder and co-ceo of FirstLight games and Aaron Bush co-founder of navic hey hello hello so yeah before we dive in just want to say Happy Diwali to all of our friends who are celebrating the Hindu festival of lights I saw lots of pictures going around it looks really really nice and

then it's Halloween and Aaron made a controversial statement before we started the recording that Halloween is the best holiday it's a fact um it's just very true as you can tell behind me I got the little pumpkin thing over here if you're on YouTube and I got my skeleton which is taking my my dog's bed up in the background I don't think he's a huge fan of that but uh yeah Halloween is is absolutely the best and partially because of the Immaculate Vibes of just you know like spooky things are just absolutely hilarious to me and I can't fully explain it and also candy is amazing and I have never grown up from being a kid and candy is still amazing and it's just an excuse to load up every October so so yeah I'm pumped for Halloween it's going to be a great time cool how do we move on from that um what's your favorite what's your favorite chocolate

I like I like Reese's from for just like the the standard chocolate Fair Reese's Pieces no not the pieces no the pieces are a downgrade I like the I like the the like the ultra king size ones the of like a big yeah I once had like a I want to say it was like a two pound Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and it was it was great I don't know where you can even get those these days but that might have been one of the the peaks of my life I'm pretty sure they're illegal in the UK and if you haven't noticed I don't like Halloween so you know we're on the two different ends here and Neil where do you sit on the Halloween Spectrum well it's funny isn't it for us in the UK Halloween is not really that big a deal as it is in the states it's definitely got bigger the last five or ten years although I feel it's been more for people going out partying rather than some trick-or-treating with kids and

things like that I don't mind they're a good clean fun is is nice to see um but I think yeah we definitely notice how like we used to work with like Americans probably same for you marry and how everyone just goes crazy for it and for us we're like huh what's the big deal I guess it's a bit similar to how like if you work in Japan they just don't care about Christmas they just think it's sort of like a romantic holiday that you might take half a day off uh but then for like every Westerner that works they're like what do you mean you're not taking Christmas all the time um I I have never strong nor negative feelings about Halloween let us know the comments how you feel about Halloween to all the listeners to help us you know make a decision on this holiday and um so scan 4.0 which we discussed a few episodes ago we deep dived into the benefits that I would bring with the update about also the challenges that will remain unaddressed that now the scan 4.0 is now live since Monday so if you're wondering all about it you can go and check out that episode episodes to

to learn about everything that's coming in the update and a nil last Royale is it now in open meet I saw some some Twitter feeds on this it is yep uh it's going to switch you can find out how to download it's available on both mobile platforms at the moment we are trying to get it through submission of Apple we're going to come to that probably one of our talking points coming right up because that has been one of the hottest Topics in the the web 3 environment right now but especially for us because this literally affecting us right now um but it's in open Beta right now yeah people can try it out we're doing uh we're doing a stream right now actually I'm doing this with you guys but the rest of my team are hosting a Halloween special stream actually so you'd probably like that Aaron they're they've dressed up and everything and having some fun and games and we did like a community stream yesterday as well so it's going quite well just getting people involved it's still I'll admit a bit rough around the edges we really believe in like MVPs getting things to players as soon as possible and iterating on the game but it's it's a big step for sure to get like a fully working web free blockchain thing all

together and um yeah but the pace is Relentless we've got to keep going so yeah it's available now that explains why I tried to search it on the app store when I saw it and I couldn't find it well that then it's no longer an open beta and it's just available right that's how we would uh make the differentiation so that's why okay okay yeah yeah okay well today we have a lot of topics to to get through I honestly don't know what the title of this episode is going to be I'll have to become creative later on so we're going to be diving into Microsoft's plan to build their own mobile storefront and appsource guidelines uh where they say hello to nft so I know it's just referencing Netflix's cloud gaming plans Silent Hills uh mile or what um Matt Diane called it smiling yeah and if there's some time we're going to discuss uh Marvel snaps mobile game release we might try to do a very lightning deconstruction attending on

all the main points of the game so no what is Microsoft's plan to build their own storefront today we have two two versus Apple here well let's go through it so this was some pretty interesting news that dropped earlier in the week um it was actually found simply through looking at the UK's competition and markets Authority there's normally like a report there discussing the merits or pitfalls of the Activision Blizzard acquisition and it happened earlier and yeah it's still not gone through but really interesting text was picked up and you know they had briefly mentioned before that they plan to build their own storefront I think it's worth calling out it's not just a storefront but it's specifically an Xbox mobile branded storefront and that I think leads with us a question so I'm going to read that what was found and we can you know discuss the kind of thought angles and questions around it so the transaction will improve Microsoft's ability to create a Next Generation game store which operates across a range of devices including mobile as a result of the addition of Activision Blizzard's content building on exhibition

Blizzard's existing communities of Gamers Xbox will see to scale the Xbox store to mobile attracting Gamers to a new Xbox mobile platform shifting consumers away from the Google Play Store and app store mobile devices however will require major shift in consumer Behavior Microsoft hopes that by offering well-known and popular content Gamers will be more inclined to try something new so quite a statement there and lots of things to unpack there so you know let's discuss something I'll give you some kind of thoughts on my end and we can go into more specifics so one you know what the Microsoft hope to gain from this activity given that seeing as they've just bought Activision Blizzard they already have some of the most successful games on mobile in their portfolio having both Candy Crush Saga and Call of Duty mobile is pretty stacked for us so if you don't mind me saying you know in terms of revenues and those both those games are IPS I don't think they're really going to struggle to get new games in that franchise to take over in fact quick little segue Maria have you seen the Call of Duty Modern Warfare advert and Piccadilly Circus in London at the moment it is the most crazy you should say oh it's really

well done it's like it's really mad advert and um yeah very impressive marketing campaign anyway moving on so so they've already got this so you know what what do they hope to gain they've already got that they've already got like a huge advantage that many people don't have um secondly this sort of thing has been tried before Tim Sweeney you know is famously trying to push like his own epic mobiles you know store onto mobile they already have it on PC they've kind of failed and you know getting through Apple's been pretty tricky and I think it's worth revisiting that statement the statement literally says you know um shifting consumers away from the Google Play Store and App Store on mobile so they're not just going for the Google plays though which is probably the more easy one to do because that's already allowed but they're specifically trying to do it on the App Store too or perhaps they've seen you know the recent uh judgments in the law that we've been discussing on this podcast quite a few new times and you know they're really getting ready for it so I think that's very interesting um what could they do differently compared to other stores um obviously they have a pretty big advantage that having people's gamer

pass and Xbox tags and things like that and get them again is pretty important although you know why can they not just use their own cloud gaming to have people play games via that and kind of get around the Xbox store completely or the need to have one um do we think that Microsoft are big enough to to cause a change and you know make people cave in and allow them in um and there's a lot more we could talk about too so yeah that's that's the topic um I'll pass over to you it's what do you think I mean it's interesting I mean I guess the the obvious point is that they just they literally can't compete on the App Store on iOS um you know maybe Android they can spin something up but it's you know for now and for the foreseeable future it's literally impossible to to like really pull this off on on iOS and so I think it's interesting to to ask like why is this even a story uh like why are they doing this even though like we all know that they they can't um at least right now um and in my mind I have a feeling that maybe to start

this is less immediately about building a competing storefront and perhaps more about building like a cross-platform like in-app um you know like touch point for Xbox users to access all of their games um and I think it's a pretty obvious move for for Xbox two and one app let users especially Game Pass members leverage xcloud to play their games on mobile devices not have to you know mess around with browsers but have like one Central Point um and an easy to access app to do that so so my guess is that maybe to start this could be more for existing users first and foremost then you know if they pull that off great you know maybe there's some optionality from there where they could then like tie in other storefront kinds of features try to move more transactions over there I still like have a hard time thinking they would ever really move like Candy Crush or Call of Duty over here that would

just like kill those games like unless you've like already built built up pretty big audiences behind this app which I don't think they would because all their other games so far are for you know console PC players not for mobile players um but I was also thinking too that like maybe it's a way for Microsoft to do its part eventually to kind of raise the heat on Apple and like from their end like push and try to get like Regulators involved to be like hey we're a big company and we can't we can't best serve our users and you know maybe they'll they'll pull like an epic games and go after some lawsuit or work with others to that that is yeah I agree with that statement yeah I think they're playing the long game with this right like there there may be some more immediate benefits but because they literally can't do it I think this is mainly more for for show for now in the hopes that maybe they can spin it into something and push the entire ecosystem in a different direction along

the way I remember back end of last year there was a statement where I believe Microsoft wanted to get into the App Store but they could not due to the game pass and they were just blocked and it seems that if I'm looking at how can we increase our Revenue growth in terms of our Xbox offering looking at that 30 that they're losing to the stores it just makes sense to to take a step into it because I imagine the costs of even doing a prototype I know I didn't work with epic but now that there's even more games an additional company exploring this you know we see some web free games doing side loading apps we see some mobile games exploring Solutions like solo to have them the store on browser it's just another player entering the market and I completely agree with you that they are playing the long game and throwing more heat and I believe there's still the filings going on with epic games

with apple now there's also the nft aspect that we'll discuss in a little bit and it's just turn turning on the heat for Apple that they can continue trying to do their wild garden but now with Microsoft throwing their weight in we'll we'll have to I think it's inevitable that Apple do lose that argument over time because Microsoft themselves fell victim to this back in the 90s right before you had Internet Explorer built into your PC and they didn't allow any competitors and then they famously fought with you know um Netscape and other browsers and no one uses that browser anymore but they won the argument and that meant that they could no longer do it and they had to allow up things and that was seen as like anti-composition so I think it's pretty similar that the same thing will happen eventually I think they're probably I'm confident that sooner or later why some legal things it may not be like an immediate thing but some country will give it in and then it will slowly start you know propagating out and then they can make a move and then you know it's not just the fact that they themselves don't have to pay 30 but then being a storefront themselves they

can probably offer developers on their store you know oh hey Maria why don't you put your game on the Microsoft store on the iPhone and you only have to pay 10 royalties rather than 30 and in return Microsoft will feature you and they all make it a better thing and get you more downloads and better revenues etc etc and um you know that could be the game changer and then you'll have like a few different people fighting it out in the front and so I think these things in my opinion are pretty likely just given that I think if you look at the legal word thing I don't feel Apple really have like a a leg to stand on really to sort of say that they are allowed to have a complete and lots of control over it it is basically anti-competition should we dive into actually then the App Store guidelines yeah okay I mean I was gonna say it's a the other potential upside of it as well is they will allow the second topic that you're going to come on to to be something that wouldn't be applicable which is also very interesting well Microsoft has taken a sense at least with Minecraft correct of being not allowing nfts in their games

yeah I wouldn't like overly extrapolate from just the Minecraft example um yeah and I think they're probably open-minded but taking it slow but yeah I haven't haven't been the most friendly to you know web3 yet so we'll we'll kick off the App Store guidelines um so the guidelines were updated on Tuesday Tuesday Monday the 24th and we won't go through all of the updates I'm just going to be focusing on discussing the guidelines that address the nfts in that there are some changes that happened in terms of the the advertisements um those will mostly be handled by the ad networks so I don't think it's it's us going going into where that's going into it and okay so I'm going to read the full paragraph that includes the updates I think I saw a lot of messages on social media discussing it that were just showing the snippet that Apple shared in the updated guidelines well I

think the whole paragraph gives more context into it so we'll go for the first um revision which is the in-app purchase guidelines that were rised to include AR and crypto restrictions and it says if you want to unlock features or functionality within your app by way of example subscriptions are in-game currencies you must use in-app purchase apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality such as license Keys augmented reality markers QR codes cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency wallets Etc apps in their metadata may not include buttons external links or other calls to action that direct consumers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase so what's been going through the social media and now I'm really curious in your interpretation of it is within the context that you can have features you can have elements in the game that unlock features and functionalities as

long as they are sold as in that purchase and then it has that revision of you cannot use your own mechanism so what do you take away from this this could be quite a long topic I have to say since Monday my phone has absolutely exploded uh both on Twitter and slack so many other people in this space have been messaging me because we're literally doing this right now we actually had one version of our app rejected last week on something similar and we're trying to figure out what we need to do um we believe we're okay but I think as you've kind of done it there I was actually having this discussion with somebody in a kind of sister company this morning and we were trying to work it out and they were like do you think we would get through based on what we're doing here so yeah it seems as you say that they have said that anything that you can buy outside of your game should also be available for people to buy in the game right at least in terms of functionality so it seems that the number of games doing things where you can buy items outside an external Marketplace and those items can be fully tradable and the players own them but in

the app players should be able to buy the same items using iaps and they should function be the same so if you have that we believe that's okay the the big you know point of contention that's really scaring a lot of people is the Gated access right so that means that you couldn't sell for example like a pass or some kind of you know nft that Gates functionality in your game and to give you some examples like um I've seen recently there's a company called uh mighty bear making the title with Mighty action heroes which is also like a top-down Battle Royale we know those guys as well very good team and they're minting like a free nft that will give you like a mighty pass I believe it's called which would allow you to to get early access to their games and for example I'm not sure that that would be allowed given the current rules because if you played the game and it says you can only play this if you have a mighty past that that certainly wouldn't be allowed even if they allowed you to play but it gated you from like certain features in the in the app that wouldn't be allowed to unless you could also buy the mighty pass inside the app too so I think things like that are going to be the biggest sort of No-No to kind of do

it and then in terms of what's going on on social media it was very interesting I can say you say there's another really great development team here in London called upsalis they were actually at one of the events that you helped present Maria and they came out and said you know we are disappointed by Apple's announcement regarding nfts but also excited about the possibilities and Innovation it will encourage now more than ever we see the benefits of being more decentralized and take control out of the hands of giants let's build muscle Emoji so I found that very interesting I really like those guys we get on very well with them I'm not fully um you know up to speed with exactly how their game works and things like that but that was quite an interesting statement perhaps says that that was something they were thinking of and then from Kenrick from play Ventures who's a really big player in the kind of space they he went and said you know overall not great but what you'd expect from a monopolistic player like apple and a prime example of how these players suffocate Innovation an opportunity for Google Play to do better long term the market should eventually force their

hand so I think those sort of sentiments are very relevant I'm also the member of several sort of web 3 groups in London that don't just do games with just web free apps in general and then I went to two events this week to discuss this topic and it was the Hot Topic that everyone was talking about a lot of kind of shock and sort of what's going to happen feeling of being a bit down on it you know I think the biggest thing is that like you're trying to make to a business based around this it kind of shows you the risks of being you know part of something like this they can just change their women you know their opinions on the whim and then you know your entire business could be destroyed overnight and what can you do about it it is pretty terrifying if you think about it people trying to work it out so it's really really fast moving I think actually what's really interesting with the whole sort of blockchain movement in general is that I can't think of a time where things were moving this quickly even free to play which moved quite quickly I don't think move that this sort of pace um I can remember like in free to play in the early days there was like um you had to require players to put um their password again every 15 minutes to stop

people making like loads and loads of purchase that was something that was done quite early on then there's like some countries asking you to have their odds for loot boxes and things like that generally speaking it wasn't too bad whereas here it seems like the rules change every five minutes and we'll see we have to do and you know I think we can call out like what what maybe this is the point you're going to go to but everyone just feels that at the end of the day they just want their 30 on nft sales but the thing is is that like that's going to destroy a lot of people's businesses or that's how they perceive it and I think they're the ones that are the most angry um my stance on it has always been like well I it was always obvious my opinion that this is going to come and it's sort of like well if that's the price you pay but then you end up having like a million players in your game rather than the 800 that the central land has or whatever crazy low number it was that was discussed in the previous podcast then you know maybe that's the price you need to pay but as we literally discussed in the first topic I think it does go to show your Tim Sweeney came

out and said um quite a while ago as well there's just like another case of Apple trying to suffocate a new technology that could be upstart and you know lead to innovation in the space and they're trying to kill it before it even gets started and I think that would be the current Vibe of all the builders in web 3 at the moment so can you purchase games on the epic game store using cryptocurrency or is it only Fiat at the moment it's only fear um but well no there is only fear but they did allow um Blancos block party to be and that's also out on Steam and that has got some blockchain integration so I think people are taking teasers I mean it's interesting because we mentioned Microsoft before in their stance but I know for a fact that there are titles right now that are going to be built on Console using blockchain the two ones I can think of the top my head is a game called shrapnel which has been developed by people who used to work for Bungie in three four three that game that's amazing and there's another game called off the grid developed by Godzilla in Germany who are like the X crisis guys and that's also they were like had a massive stall at Eurogamer for example

and that's also going to be uh blockchain integrated and doing this so there are AAA games in development so it seems like they will be allowed on Console um well they're already out they're already games on mobile that allow blockchain as well so I think everyone knows which way it's going and it's just trying to make sure that people protect you know they don't like the fact that you don't see any part of the revenue stream coming in it's all done outside and that will terrify anyone I think what's most interesting is going to see like how does um Google respond to this and you know that's what Kendrick's saying there you know they could come and put a way more positive stance on it um and you know then early one would flock over to that and that could be quite a game changer if that were to happen uh but yeah I would say everyone is spooked pretty badly so I'll um I'll introduce the second guideline which is an added guideline before I share my thoughts on it um so they added apps my user not purchase to sell and sell Services related to non-fungible tokens such as minting misting and transferring apps may allow users to view their own nfts

provided that nft ownership does not unlock features or functionality within the app s may allow users to browse nft collections owned by others provided that the apps may not include buttons so then it has a snippet about you cannot outlink someone into another place to go and buy it what place might that be Maria I don't I don't know the Microsoft store who knows um so my my thoughts is that my interpretation is that apple is okay for games to lock features and functionality in the games behind owning nfts as long as the nfcs are purchased through the in-nut purchase I think what they're blocking is you go to somewhere else to buy the nft that then locks the feature in in the game now this does bring some questions because I know that nowadays for example with hard currency the rule is more relaxed where you cannot outlink

the player within the game you can make references or they can buy it somewhere else but if you do have a browser web page for example players can go there and buy the hard currency linked to their account and then when you enter the account it's there within for example your your iPhone so it does feel like they might be taking a harder stance on these items that they listed where they will not allow this Behavior but it doesn't it doesn't fully kill the ability to use nfts within games it sounds like what is the kill factor is having to use it and not approach us which is very different to how you would expect to Dynamic price points and being able to use cryptocurrency and not Fiat what what are your thoughts now I think you're you're right and I think that is going to be the next step so I think for now they are saying that you're right that they could have completely out outlawed nfts all together and had the stance like Microsoft on Minecraft specifically where they say it's not allowed they are allowing it but they as you say are

trying to make it so players will the majority of time spend with you know real transactions they get their percentage and I think you've called out like the you know the obvious problem that they have here so at the moment on the App Store you have just these price tips so as you say with the dynamic nature of nfts and nft at one point aboard they could be worth 100 either another time when it were first minted you know maybe it was two or three or something like that the variation is insane so you can't pin it to a specific price tier unless someone buys some sort of intermediary currency to buy it but then that currency itself if it's a cryptocurrency is going to have volatility too so I would imagine that Apple will at some point develop their own intermediary system as well so that you can buy something that can you know but basically they're on crypto I wouldn't be surprised if they did that or something similar to that as like the final step to then you know really allow people to do it to me it seems like they're just rolling things out in stages before they have their kind of

own fully fledged system to just allow them to have their kids to be my prediction oh sorry well I've stumbled in your thunder completely but you might have a better way of describing it no no we're completely aligned it does seem like a stamped approach to then again continue the building their wall Garden where they do allow this but you have to to use their own systems and they'll still get their revenue share through yeah and well that I would say though given Apple that's actually quite Progressive of them compared to sort of previous things that they've done they have sometimes had like quite hard stances on things um and you know you could still argue that there is a lot of good to be done I mean does that mean they'll have their own you know built-in non-custodial wallet on your phone you know that could be a game as well in terms of you know people you know really getting access to crypto and making it mainstream so you know there could be pros and cons to this and they're wider scale but for sure as you've said you know we we can always see what's happening just to make sure that they have their cut yeah well what I don't fully understand and I am not in the space I work in free

to play mobile gaming what I don't understand is why the pricing has to be dynamic and why it has to be dynamic pins to well anchored to a cryptocurrency if you're if the principal is ownership and of course this may not be you know decentralization but for the principle of ownership even if you're buying it with Fiat in the in-app purchase you'll still own the nft do you think we might just see the concept of you know the web three principles and what it how how the the economy works with it that's possible to be honest I've never really thought about it that way I suppose on paper you could do something like that I think there's a lot of negatives for you as the the developer or seller of those items especially if you can get them for 30 cheaper outside of the app but you're right you could just have it that nfts cost this much they could never cost more or less than that you can do that via Smart contracts that has been something that I've seen discussed quite a number of times when

some people I don't actually know of a project that's doing it at the moment um but perhaps that is a a particular place where it could go to it and as you say it would just be the case of you know if you buy a specific item in insert free to play game here that you know then you own it and you're still welcome to trade it outside of the marketplace and someone else can use it perhaps perhaps that's the way that they might want people to go yeah can I offer a couple quick thoughts um yeah so in my opinion I don't think Apple cares at all about nfts all they care about is control like whatever it is if it's nfts some new technology whatever that pops up like that's all that this is this is really about in my opinion they just want to make sure that all transactions take place in their ecosystem um you know then you know taking steps to ensure like they care more about control and that these transactions take place in their ecosystem than how like profitable or successful the economy on

their platform actually is and that's so Twisted but it's so true um and you know maybe part of this is spread on from the fact that's on estimate that like over the past year uh App Store revenue is down like two or three percent uh which is probably the first time ever that's been like that and it's probably spurred on from the idfa changes so they kind of shot themselves in the foot um with that but by like ensuring that like all of these transactions like go through them like that's just their way of making sure that their business has that growth trajectory in it and they'll do whatever it takes as long as you know Regulators don't get in the way to to make that happen so it's not even like in my in my mind it's not even really about like debating the rules like it's just sort of the bottom line that like that's just what they want and they're going to get it until governments say they can't um and when I look at this like you really can divide it into two parts one is

um or two questions and one is like is Apple being anti-competitive in this move and acting in ways that are bad for users and we're and will harm businesses and then the second is is just the question of like is it still viable for web 3 mobile games to succeed and if so like what are those new best practices going to be that like can work around this to um to make it work the answer to the first question is obviously yes and so I think you guys are right that they are taking a stepping stone approach to like increasingly like encroach all of their control on every aspect of like how this works including maybe in the future of their own wallets their own you know marketplaces like whatever that means um but my guess would be like I think that he like the regulatory heat if I had to guess is going to pick up over the next year and I don't know if it'll start from this it could start from something else but then like become more broadly encompassing I think like over the next two years like we have to see like regulatory

um changes come in Apple's Direction I could be totally wrong the timing could be off but like all of these incremental steps that they're taking are just like it's just so obviously anti-competitive that like I'm just like what are Regulators doing they're focusing on like all these wrong companies and things like how are you not paying attention to the the main stuff that like actually demands attention and then yeah the second Point like I'm just curious maybe before we move on um like Anil do you think like the way that companies are going to go about um like working with users and web3 in general do you think it's going to like Apple's moves are going to force Conformity and it's going to look increasingly like what we've seen with web2 or do you think like the new best practices like there's are still going to be people finding ways to still like send people to like Buy nfts on websites even if they can't put a link and that the ecosystems surround these games more outside of the app here I think yeah

that's a great topic I think that's like a really divisive one because I think there are different companies trying different ways I think you have your kind of like people who are true to web 3 want everything to be decentralized we'll go and fight on the on the hill to dive for if they need be to make sure that they have it their way so that there isn't like a a bully in the room that's you know taking pocket money of everyone's you know uh crypto gains all the time and I think some people definitely try that and by getting the right audiences and trying to educate people they might be able to do that I'm I'm more on the other side I think more realistically you know crypto although it's showing like massive potential in the last year and a bit you know we don't yet have like a top crypto game that has got sustained revenues over a period of time actually you know blew up really quickly but then faded away so what is necessary for a game to sustain the course and to do that you just need a massive user base and as many people into it as possible so I think some

people that are approaching at that angle will probably just say well this is the price that you pay you would pay that price if you're making like a regular free-to-play game anyway is it really that different we can do this there might still be some you know potential upside you will still be able to kind of Point people out there um and so I don't think people will necessarily be happy about it like I'll admit that I'm not happy about it but you know I think it's coming to that point of you know if you could choose to have a million people in your app or a thousand people in your app unless those thousand people are extremely wealthy people um you know how's it going to do it so I think it yourself think you'll see two different things I think the interesting question would be which one of those two will win because um although it's unlikely what I will say what I actually proved is that I don't know if you ever played it yourself during the boom period but to play it was like really difficult right because you've got to set up your metamask wallet you've got to go on the site you've got to buy the axes you've got to make an account come into the game which you can't download of the app store you got to try it and yet it still flew right there was still over half a quarter of a million people playing and

the value of the token exploded and I guess it goes to show that if people hear that there's a way of making money by playing a video game they will go through these quite cumbersome and difficult steps to do it so it is still possible I think that if you get the I personally think that will still happen to a couple of games I don't know what games they will be but I'm sure some of them will just get this kind of Ponzi effect and we'll go crazy and you'll see it a few more times I expect the same thing will happen to those titles too that they'll moonshot and then collapse but if there's always a couple that do that that may still be enough of a reason for people to fight quote unquote the good fight on that Slide the things to see how it goes so a bit of a rambling answer there but I think you can see these two worlds uh Collide you know but before we move on to the Netflix uh cloud gaming so in terms of the regulatory environment I don't know if you're aware of the competition and markets Authority in the UK said that meta has to sell giphy so I think we are starting to see more attention being paid it's so stupid though

it's more the principle rather than the content is wrong trying to get like how can you like in your right mind not pay any attention to the App Store but you're gonna make meta soft freaking giphy like what are you doing like do your job my goodness anyway moving on to the next topic because this is less less scary um I do I did want to ask you a business strategy question before I move on because you said that the App Store their revenue decreased two three percent something like that and you mentioned that apple shot themselves in the foot however I think YouTube revenue and also meta has been struggling due to the ATT um well they never come out to confirm it but it is presumed that it's due to the ATT changes so do you think from a business strategy strategy perspective actually Apple came out winning because it affected their two main competitors

um um yeah I I don't know I don't know I I don't think they really compete with like meta um and they don't really compete against YouTube specifically like Google's search engine is pretty immune from like these idfa changes so I don't think they like really like made like a competitive Leap Forward other than just slowed everyone down um so I don't know if they they really won I think they could have taken like slightly like different pacing approaches instead of just like making everything impossible like really difficult overnight um I think like it still might be smart from them like competitively speaking in the sense that like their move even though it was harsh and it hurt them in the short term it will enable them to build a larger ad ecosystem where they have more touch points and control around all things Apple maybe that extends to an ad Network that hits on like third-party like other apps and

platforms too and that could be smart but yeah we're just kind of seeing the growing pains right now um and can I just interject there with something as well I think it's quite important to this topic so we didn't cover it in the Apple App Store update guidelines but there is another big one put in there that I think is equally significant and that other big one is that apple have put that they demand that anyone who uses uh boosts for social media they have to be purchased as iaps so for example if you're on Facebook and you wanted to advertise the navic metacost Fantastic metal costs you should listen to every week and you wanted to boost that right now that Revenue goes straight to meta but now under new rules actually Apple would take 30 of that so it's like another kind of screw you so I I totally agree I mean you as always are and you're really good at this you can you know you you see through the faff I call it um you're like the tech Whisperer almost I would say in that yeah they're trying to like for years they've seen how much revenue has been generated through

mobile ad revenues they've tried it several times to sort of get it working and do their I ads and I think now they holistically realized what is necessary to make it work and you know that's why you've got the Privacy why you've got these guidelines and I'm guessing that lots of core systems are about to come online I'm guessing in the next sort of six to 12 months and move people over to it and they're just trying to force everyone out and again go for their wall Garden approach I think that's what we'll see um but yeah it ties into what you were talking about that not only are they you know taking the revenue away from it that way but they're trying to like restrict it even further and just move it into their own hands okay well we're going to have to go into the Netflix cloud gaming have an ambitious schedule today yeah no I could I think we can keep this this topic pretty pretty brief um so you know uh you know obviously the Netflix and gaming story has been beaten to death at this point um but I think um you know it's still worth highlighting occasionally when something notable is sad um such as you know this past week when Mike Perdue Netflix's VP of gaming said Netflix is seriously considering cloud gaming as a value add to the Netflix

subscription um I don't think this should be all that surprising because cloud gaming is the best match for what cleanly ties into the Netflix model similar to video enabling subscribers to play on any device play anytime anywhere and have all that content be part of us of a core subscription is how Netflix operates and cloud-based delivery is the way to enable that and they're really good at at you know building best practices on how to manage cloud-based delivery so in my opinion it's really only a matter of when and how they try to you know test something with cloud gaming Mobile gaming was an easy place to start because 99 of everyone has a smartphone and they obviously started with even just simple smartphone types of games um but that does ignore how a lot of people like to game like on larger screens so because Netflix is you know just good at Cloud delivery kind of

stuff in this kind of neatly ties into how they already operate I actually would give them the benefit of the doubt that at some point they will make interesting moves here and there's no shortage of Ip that they could start to build around so the question really is just like how would people play how do they reduce the friction of the experience like would you need controllers if so how would that work you know um stuff like that but um I'm not overly concerned about that they also um he's Verdu called out that stadia struggled because of its business model which is true but you know as we've previously discussed that's also a oversimplification of you know stadia's issues but um I guess my my question to to you all to and we can keep this brief but like do you think he's underplaying the tech risk here the friction that is here to make this like actually doable for uh for users and like what do you think the best path is for them to like iterate

and test something here and now now you go Maria I I think having two big players because Xbox Xbox game pass is also exploring the Cloud solution I think we're just going to see the technology going Leaps and Bounds there's already a partnership going on with with Sam is it Samsung I believe it is um if there's anyone that can solve this it is Microsoft and Netflix yeah yeah so I'm curious I mean obviously there are limitations to the cloud-based model like you're not going to see like you know people competing Call of Duty at a hide level through like through Netflix's Cloud Delivery Systems but they're obviously people play games in lots of different ways so there still could be something interesting here just really curious to see what that ux um ends up looking like the the last thought I just kind of wanted to throw out there and this is just like a crazy thought it's not even a prediction but

it just it got caught in my mind and I thought it was interesting um is that maybe one day Microsoft should acquire Netflix obviously they have their hands full right now um with Activision Blizzard and Regulators around that um but it has nothing to do with Enterprise software but the opportunity to put the leading Video subscription and gaming subscription Under One Roof and bundle and integrate them somewhat effectively and share IP across all of the development event and production teams um that would be awesome um and I don't see the Anti-Trust case here because like what does this have to do with like anything really um like they're they don't operate in video like you know there isn't like a strong case to make there even though I'm sure some regulator would make something up but um anyways I just thought that was interesting it would be a huge acquisition but it would like build like perhaps the most interesting

entertainment subscription business in the world and it's just on the path and like we're on the path already to see gaming and traditional um entertainment merge increasingly so anyways that thought made me excited but probably won't happen but I'd have still wanted to share it would make perfect sense by that I don't think that would ever be allowed I think other companies would step in as well the amount of power a company would have as you say to have those two things Under One Roof you complete Monopoly on the entire Market surely at that point it would be amazing as a consumer to be fair right like you get all the movies and all that kind of stuff I think coming back to your previous question like I agree if there's one company that understands cloud-based technology surely it's Netflix I will be intrigued to see what they did I think to be fair they've shown it both in this sort of TV offerings and even with the games that they're willing to try kind of like smaller stuff first just to see how it goes then build upon it and I think that's actually really cool from Netflix that's like kind of on like some of the other companies so they don't mind

putting out almost the subpar product to begin with just to sort of get that initial data read and work out if it's worth reinvesting into so I think they would probably try the same and I think you know will they learn the lessons from the past as you say instead of going for you know High you know Fidelity action games if you just went for like turn-based games or very narrative driven games of which they've got great IP stranger things you know squid game etc etc where you could do like more choices rather than reactions there'd be a lot to build up so I'll be interested to see what they come up with too and um actually I think squid game could be one that you see something for this like because they've already said something where you know they're going to have like real life games and stuff like that and now they've got a gaming service and they could tie it in together and there is only one winner and you get a price I mean I can see that making of being very lucrative but actually we'll we'll tap into that a bit with the Silent Hill I'm I'm just fascinated Aaron with that prediction of Netflix it just clicks it makes a lot of sense and I don't know if companies would try to prevent it

and and be against it especially if we see Netflix dwindling their subscription numbers and we start seeing lead other leading competitors in the space in terms of entertainment subscriptions Netflix currently is trying to do a store within a store on the mobile platform so you still download the game so you know if Microsoft does do their store yeah wow their model kind of run away at the moment I don't even know what to say their market cap is 130 billion though so I mean the size of the acquisition would be monster and normally at that level it's hard to get them through right that's you're always talking about twice what they've paid for Activision Blizzard and that that's still almost the year from being announced to it going through that's why I think you would just get caught in red tape but let's see yeah it would be it would be studied by Regulators for sure but for context I I don't have it right in front of you but yeah Microsoft's market cap is probably like 15 times larger than Netflix's so it's still be a pretty small percentage of Microsoft's

business which is like crazy to think about but anyways uh Maria should we dive into selling Hill okay cool um yeah so yeah let's talk about Konami and silent Hill and um yeah before jumping in I just want to say that um Max from the navic digest team he wrote a really good piece on all of this too from his perspective especially comparing everything going on here to how Capcom managed Resident Evil has it been published yet as the time we're recording but it'll be out once the episode goes live so make sure to check that out he did a good job on that but uh let me start sorry it's not going to be on the navic pro subscription uh navic digest oh digest okay yep yep um so yeah everybody can go and check it out uh if you're if you're signed up for the newsletter um but yeah let me start I guess by by covering just the general news of what happened so in short after many years of stagnation Konami announced several

Silent Hill announcements all at one time in a in a big presentation um the first was Silent Hill F and this is a new Mainline game in the series uh the next one was Silent Hill to remake which is being developed by Bluebird team I think it's going to be a PS5 exclusive and my guess is it'll probably be the first game out of this list to get published there was another one Silent Hill Town fall um which was being developed by like a double a studio we don't know much about this project but it's it's something new in the Silent Hill Universe um there's a silent hill Ascension which is a massively interactive live event a mile which is a collaboration between genvid entertainment um JJ Abrams bad robots and a couple other places and it's interesting maybe we can talk a bit more about about that but basically like that long event will be Canon multi-platform and it's the first um mild that really truly leverages a

gaming IP for gamers um so lots of interesting Innovation going on there and then I think the last project to be announced was Return to Silent Hill which is uh a movie um continuing the trend of you know everything going with IP ecosystems I might have missed something there but there was a lot you know bottom line is that a lot was announced at once and just for context the last Silent Hill game um Silent Hill downpour and that excludes all the weird like mobile and like slot machine spin-offs that apparently exist but that Silent Hill downpour game uh was released in 2012 and the PS3 Xbox 360 era and obviously PT which was getting um developed by Kojima Productions got canceled in 2014 so so this is really like a like after a decade of Nothing Is Like A Renewed like big bet on the Silent Hill um franchise and I have thoughts but

um I guess I would like to open up to the group so I don't drone on forever but yeah I'm curious to hear your thoughts on why Konami is Reviving The Silent Hill franchise now and why attack it in such a big way well I think they've seen the success of that genre in general right it's not just Resident Evil although that's a hundred percent of they've done it because they're based in the same city as Capcom and Resident Evil is doing gangbusters but I think it's also things like the last of us how you get the last of us Netflix show as well zombies are always popular how many Walking Dead spin-offs are there now way too many to count way too many than there should be but that's been going on for over 10 years and it's been very successful it's like one of those funny things that for whatever reason people just can't get enough of zombies I guess from the Halloween lover here that that makes a lot of sense that you would bring up this kind of zombies are overrated but anyways continue so I I guess it's just a really proven Trope though that's the thing right and okay to be fair Silent Hill isn't so

much about zombies in fact sometimes I I used to remember people used to say oh what's the best Resident Evil game and the answer is Silent Hill too was the joke that people used to make because that one in particular was like really really well done and like really atmospheric and kind of psychological horror-esque but you know very popular it makes sense for them to do it I mean Konami kind of shifted their strategy quite radically didn't they in recent years they really moved away from General game development it's the reason why Kojima left they don't really use their licenses in the best way and I'm sure there's some money man in their companies realize hang on what are we doing here we're sitting on this pot of gold IP and we're doing absolutely nothing with it we need to go and do it you're right to say it's interesting that they've decided to go for it in such a big way it feels like it's like a massive Revival but perhaps again if they've looked at how that seems to be the way that people are doing it these days that when you bring back an IP you don't just bring it back with a kind of like you know small test product do you ever go all in or you go you know go go hard or go home and they've obviously decided to go hard so the interest to see it although I wonder he'll kind of

do it I do feel like the Silent Hills I might the Resident Evils really sort of fell away I don't think they really did a good job of Reinventing themselves I think people forget that Resident Evil sort of reinvented itself twice you know it went from like sort of third person tank controller into amazing third person over the shoulder game and then it did it again into first person view and it's always had that popularity and you know really top-tier developers I mean uh it's something that we didn't cover here but I think maybe for a future topic capcom's sort of like a Resurgence into being such a massive player has been huge for them so maybe again they've seen that and they've realized that there's something to capitalize on that and they need to get on top of them and I don't play horror games this is why I don't like Halloween I get scared very easily um my understanding is that the horror genre for gamers is underserved at the moment there aren't that many appealing very terrifying horror games out there so it could also be that market opportunity that makes with everything that you said that's the additional gain that they would Target

that's definitely true I think as well just the the industry in general is growing right still there's there's new audiences that haven't played this sort of game that are now available as different regions around the world become more game Savvy and they're not used to sort of thing and it's like we had a good product once you can kind of bring it back again and why not do it and make a better version I think you know for example um come back to Capcom they're about to release their Resident Evil 4 remake right and I don't know if you saw the trailer that dropped last week of it but wow it looks so awesome right and personally that's one of my favorite like that'd be my top three games of all time and it's like and that's the existing game that already exists it's like if you're already taking like an absolutely incredible game and you're making it better is very likely to succeed I would imagine that you know Konami could easily do that with as I said Silent Hill 2 or something like that which is like I think you know in the PlayStation 2 generation it was like ranked in like the top five games or something like that you just make a better version of that Nostalgia hits hard Final Fantasy 7 remake would be

another one you know it's been pretty proven that if you just take something that already exists but make it like 10 better that sheer Nostalgia value alone can reignite an IEP and make it successful again and I think that would bear it have a lot of uh bearing and why they've decided to do this too well what I am most excited about is the mile event the inter the light the massive is it massive it's massively interactively okay I got corrected before so I know very well now okay I see there's a journey just in terms of culture where all IPS are no longer entertainment icips becoming part of people's personalities you define yourself based on whyps you associate yourself with and I think before there was a lot of associations with culture you know the emo Culture The Rock culture many other cultures and now IPS are almost the next step in terms of that identification of what team you belong to and I know at least in London it's extremely extremely popular to go

to immersive of entertainment where you're going to an immersive Guardians of the Galaxy or immerse of James Bond so people have that desire to take the extra step to be part of the actual Narrative of their favorite IP to feel that they are creating the story with their favorite characters and people want to do it together and so for me yeah this is definitely the most exciting it's almost saying um Konami go okay how can we take this a step forward leveraging what is already being explored and having a horror movie or you know horror experience where you're deciding what characters do I actually think it's perfect because this the small number of times I watched a horror movie or even the the last alien I always just scream like why are you doing this you would never do that don't go in that room you know it's going to have something bad in it and so being able to make those choices it just makes a lot of sense in the horror genre yeah it's a great group activity and I

yeah I'm really curious to see what they do here and um yeah I've been really impressed with genvid and like they're they're genuinely pioneering a new like form factor of entertainment um and that's really cool um and if anyone listening missed it I I did interview their co-founder and CEO um Jacob novoke a few weeks ago so you could probably find that if you want to learn more just about like miles and how they're thinking about this but yeah I think this is really cool from the sense that and this one is the Silent Hill Ascension one but yeah I think it's cool from the standpoint that they uh it makes Silent Hill multiplayer for the first time um it's cool because how it plays out which no one knows from the beginning is going to be considered canon in this universe um you know it's going to be streamed to a bunch of different platforms which is like a step up from some of the the last couple miles that were just like exclusively on Facebook uh which is not where like all of the gamers are um and yeah this is the first mile that

like targets a notable gaming IP and so I'm just really really interested to see where this goes I think that um you know they'll have to be smart about how exactly they go about this it'll be it'll need some parts of it will need to be different from some of the other miles that they've done like they I don't know if this will be the best fit to like throw in like a match three mini game you know um you know versus some some other options that they could do um and I think it's important that they execute pretty well and get this right because this really is the first impression to Gamers on what this type of experience can be and if they do a good job I could see lots of other IPS wanting to then work with them to to kind of spin up similar things because it's a great um Community like engagement mechanism to keep people like really interested in what you're doing so so yeah I'm really I'm really excited to see where this

goes um but yeah I mean even bigger picture though just to just sort of like backstep a little bit it's you know I think they're making all of these moves partially I mean Anil you said Konami has somewhat mismanaged some like IPS and approach but at the same time if you look at their financials every year is just up up up up so they're doing something right and they're they're really profitable um while they're while they're doing it and it's you know they're one of those like uh like mini Japanese gaming companies where their business also has like an arcades business and a slot machine business they also own a random Fitness company which I learned and their their big thing is that's really successful that Fitness Company it's like yeah yeah and uh their their big thing is they're spinning up Pilates studios um and it's Pilates mirror as they call it and so they um have basically they put mirrors on the ceiling and that's their differentiator for Pilates has nothing to do with what we're talking

about but fun fact about Konami um but anyways I mean the the gaming part of the business is still like the biggest most profitable driver obviously but you know at like higher levels of scale you just need bigger catalysts to unlock that future that future growth and so I think it's like important that they had to come up with something and Silent Hill is like an obvious Contender from their their library of what to um what to work with to create you know a further Catalyst for growth and then I do think that they have a lot of fomo um you know from what Max wrote a navic digest he was basically making the point that like Resident Evil as a franchise has like outsold Silent Hill by like more than 10x uh like more than ten to one um and Silent Hill also has done a pretty good job with the remakes like as we were talking about and like a highly effective way um and their transmedia strategy and you know with movies and I think they also

have a show coming to Netflix Etc so like to compete you kind of have to go big um and like think about it from from a multi-pronged system you know it can work because you have seen it work down the street and so you know maybe they're a little jealous about that um you know I don't think they'll they'll topple Resident Evil but you know if the games are good and they hit on what makes modern horror games Excel um then yeah I think it could be interesting and Konami like too like pairing that with like they are trying to be very future focused it's sort of like repulsive in a sense if you read through their their stuff because it's like it's like all the buzzwords thrown in about like they're about like how you know nft this metaverse that 5G even 6G they're now calling out and I'm like what the heck um and so like I don't know if this is just two investors and they're just like throwing out as much as they can but like they are trying to lean into like the future and where things are

going such as with these miles they're spinning up like a nft platform too that I don't think touches into any of what we're talking about yet but maybe one day in the future well so so yeah they're trying some interesting stuff but yeah I'm excited to see how Silent Hill in particular um uh shakes out but um yeah anyone else have any further points on this topic or should we move on yeah we we can run there lots lots of interesting insights there and I don't know if we're going to see like a zombie project Makeover where it's match three and you're trying to make over your most horrifying zombie if no one's developing that it might be a market there yeah so I was going to do a lightning deconstruction of Marvel snap but looking at our recording time I think I'll just leave instead of lightning it'll just be a high humidity count um I'm going to just really summarize this oh no engine went no I'm enjoying

my joke that's okay I enjoyed it okay so Marvel's not was developed by second dinner Studios uh whose Founders are X Hearthstone including the game's former game director and it was published by new verse that is owned by by dance um the official announcement on the first gameplay it was uh shared earlier this year and around January 2019 second dinner announced a 30 million investment from netease who is Blizzard's partner in China um they also announced at the time a deal with with Marvel and there was a lot of confidence when I was reading all of these announcements that they would produce a fantastic game because there was a game live at the time called Marvel battle lines that was showing a lot of Promise in terms of a Marvel card battler it went live in October 2018 unfortunately it ended service in January 2020 I couldn't find too much data on it so unfortunately I cannot compare the two so very quickly some of the gameplay

takeaways in case you haven't played Marvel snap uh what makes us special is I have simultaneous turns in terms of the cards gameplay and you have very small decks with limited moves um and you have a Mana that increases over time so all in all what it does is I creates a short and sweet game Loop where there is some strategy involved but you really only need five minutes to sneak a game in the gameplay is also a variable because you have the card power combos so the cars that you play the locations that you play with they have random powers and the whole purpose of the game is that you want to conquer two out of three locations based on your accumulated power and you get power based on the cards um and how they combo with each other so there's an element in terms of tech building where you're trying to get different cars in with different Mana costs to do these these combos you play the cards differently depending on the revealed and the unrevealed location Powers because they're revealed over time so there's a bit of push your luck element there and

there's also the ability to multiply the points that you'll win or lose through the snap mechanic hence the name Marvel snap and you have the option to choose to retreat at any time before the game ends so that you minimize your losses and that's really interesting because you can play some mind games where you put a card down that is really powerful and you snap and the other person will get scared and Retreat or they will call your bluff and then you actually end up losing pretty bad the rewards are cosmetic where you get to upgrade your cards so upgrading our cars doesn't bring a new power what it changes is how it changes the look of it and then you have different variations of the cards and looking at the high level numbers so far so they're they're doing a significant UA drive with and also with a store featuring um you can see the UA scaling the numbers where for example they went from 97k downloads to 425k only after a few days

um and they enter the top five download chart on Apple and the top 15 chart of downloads on Google Play but it does not enter the top Revenue charts and we're going to dive into that a little bit so if we're comparing to the recent launches of new card game strategies sorry card strategy games so for example Yu-Gi-Oh Master Jewel that was about 4.5 x Marvel snaps Revenue although snap is 3x Yu-Gi-Oh Master Jewels downloads and if we compare it with Team fight tactics very similar where team fight tactics revenue is higher than snap the snap had higher downloads so we're going to have to see if Marvel snap can sustain the the downloads once you know we'll have to see how the UA performs uh Tim Manvel who sometimes joins the round table his shared insights is that it appears that Marvel snap is pursuing a high Dau and a low arpdale strategy so it's only been

live since October 18 so we'll have to revisit it very very quickly in terms of the challenges I've been playing the game quite a lot and I think the summary is that I really enjoy the game it's fun but I can't find anything that I want to buy because you can't actually buy new cars to get new powers you get I was gonna say I'm surprised you didn't mention that that's the the beginning yeah yeah you you have to you get new new cards with that have new powers through progressing your collection and you progress your collection by upgrading your cards which like I said uh a minute ago is about all about Cosmetics so you're you're investing your resources to change the look of the cards I think they had a a beta where they had introduced loot boxes and they have they had massive pushback and now it just feels like they went to the other end of the Spectrum which is you can't even buy um Powers you have to just progress through the mechanic and playing so one

reason they did that as well is that they were quite against what's called net decking so what used to happen in Hearthstone specifically is they drop a new expansion and then in the first week because you get millions of games played between all these players and they have stats built into their clients they work out what the best deck is really really quickly right it solves The Meta game and then everyone builds these decks and it's like very boring when you just see the same deck over and over and over again it's almost like the fun of the game is only in that two-week period so with this system the thing is that even if there is a deck that you really wanted to build it's almost impossible to build that deck because you can't buy the cards directly so I think that that's the sort of thing that they've gone for it's almost like oh I don't even know what Maria's got when we're fighting against one another I have to work it out as we go and you do it that way that has pros and cons to it as you say it's a kind of different strategy and I guess that if they're ethos as well it's just to make it like a a much faster but satisfying game you know the faster Loop is also a big thing it's just interesting to see how they've done it but um I'm delighted for that team though still it's like a very strong team I

don't know if you've ever seen Ben Rhodes rap video but as someone who makes game like uh my team have asked me to do one like that many times I've been like I'm not as good as that guy to do a rap video that's absolutely amazing um I think you're right though to say where will it go they're definitely pursuing that strategy G can it work I think it's somewhat worked for Hearthstone I think it's also really good for a new company to have that kind of like seal of approval or quality stamp on it that you know they can be trustworthy they seem to be going that direction um and I guess they could always introduce the boxes later or direct card sales if it was something the players wanted yeah I think what ends up happening is that there's low variability in terms of the cards until you get quite far into the game and you start progressing your collection where at the start you get specific cards but then you get cards from a pool so it's a bit more randomized until you get to that point the game can be a little bit samey and there are another challenge is that their season pass has a design that is uncommon where they don't have two tracks the premium track and the free

track they have a single track and it's mixed between free Wars and the premium Awards and the premium Awards again you get four cards I think are exclusive and they'll have their own powers and then you're earning the resources to upgrade their upgrade them more quickly and I don't I don't understand the the season pass for me it just signals that maybe there's lack of monetization depth to the point where you don't have enough content to have two tracks of compelling rewards to keep the CL the players pursuing and just quickly to hit on the UI and the ux it's very confusing and I think that tied to the season pass the way that you um get the rewards is that you have to complete the objectives and the objectives are separated into chapters and the chapters unlock over time so that the players can't just complete the season pass very very quickly but what happened to me is that I entered Midway or near the end of now this season of

the battle pass which means that when I unlock the premium pass yes because you don't get the premium pass available from the get-go you have to First Complete a free pass to then get the upsell but once I completed that I was presented with I don't know 20 25 objectives and they're not objectives that you complete organically so you have to just constantly go back and forward so the if that's the compelling mechanism I think that we'll see them trying to perfect that experience of the navigation and yeah that's that's the lightning humidity count talk so it seems like you have some hesitations on the the success of this ultimately I I do but I like Anil said it's a very strong team it's a team that knows in a no car strategy games and so if there's anyone that can solve these challenges I'm sure that they're looking at the data they're looking at the progression of the season pass and the collection mechanic I think everyone I've that I've

heard is playing this game is that they say I'm hooked I love it it's just so much fun and so now is okay you got that compelling that compelling core core mechanic and now how do you build out a compelling um content to enable the purchases because I you I think from my understood is that the players who are further into the strategy and looking into the details they they understand what they need to buy to to perfect their progression and get there faster but if you're more a casual player the game makes it really difficult to connect the dots of what you need to buy and why so I think just simplifying that that positioning with the players so that's just really obvious I think you'll just unlock even further growth yeah we'll have to keep an eye on it this game is definitely built for Asia as well I would say mainly given the fact that net is the ones that fronted most of the bill and the kind of playbook for Asian Games is always to go with that strategy they always go for the higher retention numbers large player based they'll even

focus on that or a year or two before they start adding paid lines like if you've got pubg mobile pubg mobile you can spend any money in it pretty much for the first six months to a year they just got it out get people playing get them hooked then you add the ways to spend money and they recognize that that's like the Playbook to make a killer title and that's why I feel this the ethos of this game I looked at the revenue and their highest performing country is the United States followed by South Korea and Japan okay that's interesting yeah I guess that's where the Marvel IP is strongest though so you know exactly yeah and they do that extremely well I must say that cars are just gorgeous they're really nice to look at okay well I think we'll wrap up the episode here okay sounds good let's see I see nods of agreement um yeah if you have anything to add to the discussion you can find us on the navic Discord uh it's coming to the end of the year and we're really Keen to get some feedback on the round tables just

to understand like what connects with you what you enjoy what you take away and things that we could improve so you have my email in the show notes I'd really love to hear from you and listen to all of your feedback you can also connect with me on LinkedIn just really curious to know what you think about the round tables and yeah thanks for joining Aaron Anil amazing as always and we'll see you all next week bye everyone [Music]