Zynga’s Web3 Launch / Netflix Cloud Gaming / Gran Turismo Movie Release

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taxonomy also with data.ai mobile games Publishers can track competitors prioritize features assess monetization models monitor market share explore demographics improve App Store optimization and much more you can learn more at data.ai or check out the link in the show notes and with that let's jump into the episode hello everyone welcome to another novik Roundtable I'm your host Devin Becker and with me I have some excellent panelists as always we got Dave Elton and Jonathan anastas with us today how you guys doing we'll give that to a good Lively discussion then see how well you guys are actually doing uh when we get into the topics uh we have we have a good variety today for just only having a few people we've got some fundraising coming from play Ventures yet again Gran Turismo doing uh okay to start off with your the box office that look like maybe Savvy group might have been the culprit

behind embracers deal falling apart for two billion dollars so we'll get into that Zynga surprised everyone here with its web 3 game announcement from their zw3 division as they call it now and Netflix teasing a bit more into the cloud gaming with uh some controllers and things going on we'll start off with the fundraising we like to talk about money first right so let's get into play Ventures here excellent well you know in this world and backdrop of negative stories around VC and negative stories around funding and how hard it is to raise money and put Capital into play it's great to see good news and and gaming generally has been an overperform you know in this category it's not been as dire as some other categories it's been a bright spot in the world of investing but it's nice to see that play Ventures you know announced through an SEC filing that 78 million dollars for fund three uh has been raised they didn't reveal the total fund size for those not familiar play Ventures is a Singapore based company born in 2018 funds one and two led to over a hundred

Investments across gaming Studios content platforms mostly early stage they hit my radar when I moved to Singapore for one championship in 2019 and they sort of embody that you know sort of like hyper capitalist like you know look forward you know strong view of like Singapore based companies and it it sort of there where they're based in their sort of like action in The Marketplace fit very well to me fund one claims 66 internal returns which is much better than the average and 1.5 x distro in four years their exits have included rework uh Savage gaming Studios fun2 has Odio and loop deck so I I'm very bullish you know on fund three and I'm very bullish on play Ventures and I've said to anyone who will listen in all this like Doom and Gloom around fundraising in VC that gaming is a place to keep putting your money and it's it's an overperform so I think you see another indication of the positivity in the marketplace around gaming and another indication of the success around play

Ventures so you know not a surprise but certainly great news and and happy to report on it yeah I was very happy to see that especially given you know how how tight money is how expensive money is these days that we are still seeing some some new funds come about I'm even you know still seeing even some web 3 funds new web free funds Devin gotta love those yeah probably not SEC filing though but uh I mean yeah it's good good to see the money still going around I mean I'm kind of curious like they reported on fund one uh is there any indication how fun two's been doing I've not seen any data my guess is it fun to is too early to sort of you know given sort of the timing on exits so we're really working out the performance of fund one I think fun two is less than two years old so it'd be surprising to have a huge number of exits at this point but uh you know they've got great buzz in the marketplace both globally and in Singapore and are big part of the Singapore Tech and VC world like they sort of feel like they're everywhere when you're in country so uh you know

the vibe around them remains highly positive is there any indication like based off like the trends from fund one and two in the current environment where they might deploy some of fun three like like just based off the patterns that they've had and what you know about them as a company I personally you know they seem to be early stage is like the only indicator right they go broad they go attack they go data they go studio so really the only end indicators early stage versus later stage you know like stage seems very focused uh you know sector seems fairly broad well I do hope some of it gets sliced off for web 3 as Dave said but uh maybe not I mean I I don't know if I don't know if the AI booms are already done if the slice will get cut off for that or Ai and games uh obviously is doing quite well we've seen some of that still lately so uh I mean it's good for games right like this is definitely a a tough Market when it comes to mobile and uh budgets and things like that like there's a lot of headwinds so it's this is as you guys said very positive news to have that you know keep going uh and moving forward uh

speaking of moving forward uh Gran Turismo a a video game Centric movie what a surprise as of late but a kind of a different one yeah yeah no it's uh been interesting to follow uh this particular one and that it's a slightly different take in terms of bringing a video game franchise into the big screen um so the the new story that's been coming around is that uh you know Gran turismo's opened up in some International markets over the last weekend um grossing one was considered a decent amount at uh 10.7 million dollars um you know France was the top uh Top Market followed by the UK Australian Germany um and the film is planning on opening up inside the United States uh on August 25th so instead of being you know that that fictional tale it's actually based on a true story of a Gran Turismo player uh being given the opportunity to race uh real cars in real life

um you know if we were to take a look at uh some of the comparisons inside uh the film space obviously the big ones you know people would be playing out uh Super Mario Brothers uh and how well it's done at 1.3 uh billion dollars as of uh last weekend um if you're looking for a direct movie uh comparison in terms of racing Need for Speed a franchise near and dear to my art uh it had an overall box office of 203 million um with uh if you're doing a comparison uh it's opening weekend and international markets was 45.6 million dollars as compared to the 10 but the markets uh for Need for Speed are a lot broader than what Gran Turismo opened into um and you know the the concept of bringing IP into the movie theater or into the small screens um certainly has been in the news a lot recently you know as as we mentioned you know Super Mario Brothers has done an

amazing uh box off return this year uh The Last of Us on TV has been you know definitely a critically acclaimed show uh for HBO um you know but not all companies are rushing to take all of their IP into the big screen uh take two's CEO Strauss elnick was quoted this week as saying you know that there's really a relatively small Economic Opportunity and that for every Super Mario Brothers or Last of Us there's been a number of films that have not done well now it doesn't mean that take two is completely out of the picture in terms of bringing their IP to you know multiple mediums as they have both a Borderlands movie coming out in partnership with Lionsgate as well as a Bioshock movie um you know it and I think one of the biggest concerns is as zeldick pointed out was that you know taking your your cherished IP the thing that you've spent years in some cases even decades um you know crafting a fantastic franchise and fantastic experience for

the players is that you're really taking that IP out of your hands and in the control of somebody else's hands and you know sometimes there's a little bit worried about how things happen you know how things end up in that translation as well from a video game format into a non-interactive format being of your TV but it'll be interesting to see how uh Gran Turismo does perform in the US when uh when it opens up uh in a few weeks yeah I I definitely think uh it has potential to at least make its money back I mean it's it's been on a budget of about 40 million supposedly which is I mean they've obviously spent some more on marketing things like that but 40 million is actually relatively cheap for a movie these days um it probably helps that that they had a Neil Bobcat do it which he's going to do low budget stuff District 9 being kind of his big claim to fame so it's like you know I guess with a movie like that that kind of brings to mind the idea that like hey if you're not really sure how it will do you know come in with a low budget like that I mean that budget alone is less than the games cost to make right so like it's cheaper to go

transmedia with that and it becomes like a very long commercial for the game uh so that you know and it kind of becomes marketing budget for it I mean I do wonder how involved uh you know the game makers might have been I I do know from watching some of the behind the scenes promotion with it that the um The Stunt Driver for the main character of the game is the actual person the movie's based on uh so so you're still able to be involved in the film which is awesome you actually get to see him drive in the movie the real person so uh so yeah some cool tines there and on the audio side uh I know the the team that helped out with uh some of the audio on the movie uh a fantastic team who's done amazing work when it comes to Automotive Audio uh both in games and in commercials and film and TV um so I have no doubt that the film will actually sound really really good uh if nothing else yeah I mean it's it's interesting um you know the biggest successes in this space have been big swings right

like the most famous gaming IP with the biggest budgets behind them with the biggest marketing pushes behind them done at a super high level you know the worrisome thing here to me are there a couple worrisome things is like hey I think it's running like a 47 Metacritic right that's too early for a Rotten Tomato score which is a little bit worrying B the world doesn't seem to have a lot of place for 40 million dollar movies anymore right it's either like you know 10 exit on your 10 million dollar movie or crush it on your billion dollar movie and I'm gonna give you a very interesting piece of Los Angeles Zeitgeist around this movie which actually may kind of tie to you know the budget level which is like so we become for those people who don't live in Los Angeles spend a lot of time here we spend a lot of time marketing to ourselves and the people that make the films in outdoor right so like you can kind of get a sense of where the best bets are by driving through Hollywood West Hollywood the Sunset Strip and seeing like who has the sides of buildings you know who has the biggest Billboards

and here's what I will say about the Gran Turismo Billboards I've seen they are small Billboards they are not like the heroic Billboards they are not wall Scapes and that is often indicative of the Studio's belief in the movie right to some degree it's indicative of the budget but to another degree it's indicative of the belief and so when I walk around and I don't see like the side of a building on Sunset and I see like a regular old-fashioned billboard unlike La Brea I see diminished expectations and then there was also like the last minute switch off their U.S date and like not sure what that Flinch was about but you know the the sort of like person driving through Los Angeles POV you know is like Zeitgeist isn't huge on this I think the uh the report was in regards to the switch in in date uh inside the United States is the Hope for getting some Buzz around the film

internationally and then using that to help create sort of a bit of an upswell in terms of positive PR for the movie before launching um has it reached that yeah I've not with the Rotten Tomato score yeah not with that at least the the the positive side though is the delay does set them up to not really have much competition box office because Barbie and Oppenheimer will be done by that point Blue Beetle probably won't carry it very far into that and there's not really much else I don't think Strays is going to be competing with it so it's it may just have it to itself I mean normally like dump Seasons like January February right like this is clearly not like a dump kind of thing no but as you said it may be like low Faith but low budget so it's one of those situations where it's like it's one of those things where probably just makes its money back and plus a little and it's it's fine but obviously we're like swimming in transmedia now so this is like gonna be par for the course I mean even if this movie tanks I don't think they like give up on video game movies anytime soon right we just continue to like wade into

this until we end up with like the original Super Mario Brothers movie then then we back off again for a while I think at that point uh for for you know but it's like look how long it took for Marvel fatigue to kind of set in right like so I think there's definitely some some runway for this kind of continued thing to happen obviously like some will be much bigger budgets some will make much more money and it'll be like kind of varied but I don't I don't think this is like a terrible bet and it's for at least fans of the game probably like exciting to watch just for them to think maybe that could be me oh totally and I don't think it's a terrible bit it's funny that you bring that up about what's happened with trans media because it feels like exactly that to me it feels kind of like a 2010s play at trans media like you're trying to like Leverage some IP and keep the budget down and like and like hit a double and win right like that's like the 2010 model uh like the 2010 to 2015 model of like trans media and then we got into like big swings right where all of a sudden transmedia was like shooting

for like Marvel size wins or DC sized wins so it feels like a return to OG like diminished expectations but diminished risk yeah but I think even you know looking at take two's approach like they're willing to take some of their like granted like big franchises but not their Top Line franchises right like it's Bioshock and Borderlands not Red Dead Redemption or you know Grand Theft Auto that they're looking at licensing out so it is interesting to see sir where where companies are putting their bets in terms of what they're willing to license out and see what kind of returns they can get on it but I'm really getting the impression that Nostalgia plays or like uh fan service are I've been a big part of like some of the successes obviously Mario was like a ton of fan service right like there was just references all over the place tons and tons of them you know so that you could re-watch it even and see new things potentially that seems like a key thing like we're seeing just across a lot of media I mean a lot of like old reboots coming back a lot of people

trying to play off that stuff you know sometimes Landing it sometimes not but sometimes it's people that were you know fans of it originally sometimes it's people that were involved and so it seems like if they can kind of keep up that sort of thing where it's like we know our audience we know what they want we can also Bridge a little bit for a new audience like you know illumination handling for example Super Mario Brothers they're they're generally going for a younger audience right so they could bring in the younger audience they could have fun but then obviously like a ton of the movie was for a much older audience nostalgia-wise Gran Turismo is kind of in a weird spot right where it's like maybe not so much for some of the older audience maybe some of them like that are you know the car Fanatics were people that like grew up maybe in some of the old gran turismos but but not like a super young audience either so like that might be a trickier demographic but it does seem like if you know your audience for these ones and you could just play to that fan service that seems to have been like most of the successes out there outside of like I'd say like Disney's live-action reboots is probably the the worst fan service I've

seen I I totally agree and it's interesting right because if you go to that point like to me Gran Turismo was about this like culty hardcore Automotive IP where like they actually got credit for like when Nissan finally brought the skyline the GTR to America right like the 100 awareness of that vehicle was from the game right like Fast and Furious and like the Gen Y people buying it you know knew it from the game and actually that's that's why I think that it was like a little weird that they kind of went for a different story instead of a game-based narrative that they went for this sort of real life story that like runs parallel to the game but back to your point about fan service right like I am the prime audience for like Top Gun right and when you want in a Top Gun it was full fan service there's the ninja 900 1985. there's the black Porsche watch right like there's the shirtless you know on the beach ball like sports scene like they had like they hit all the Beats right and it's like served the old

audience who brought their kids and and I agree with you I think like that's that that sort of like hitting the touchstones and both being reverential and nodding to the past while also sort of moving the narrative forward is like the perfect formula yeah I was just looking at the box office numbers the other day and Maverick actually still edged out a little bit over Mario Brothers just by like uh about 100 million or so uh so like yeah it's it's working right like obviously not everyone's gonna work right some of them aren't gonna land and some of them just maybe won't have the Right audience to come out to the theaters and stuff but it seems like just serve the fans what they want like the classic like a mix of the old and the new and like everyone's happy like I mean I don't think we're gonna see like a Crash Bandicoot movie anytime soon but you never know and but that's the whole thing it's funny I'll tell you a little side about about Maverick I Arbitrage it I went out and bought a ninja 900 six months before the movie came out and sold it three months after the movie came out and made 40 percent

so like you're like those Air Force recruiters that were hanging out yeah so like it kick-started like all that fan service well maybe there needs to be more business models built up around scooping that up like you were right where it's like uh you know obviously uh the the new Super Mario Brothers game right the Wonder you whatever got announced like not too far after the movie right so it got to capitalize a bit on that and I think those sorts of things were if they set up like their plays like to follow it up like if Gran turismo's like hey I hope you enjoyed the movie by the way we've got a new game coming out like those kinds of of Moves Like could really turn this into a actually a fairly cheap commercial hold on like on the grand scale of things right like if you just time it right obviously it could be hard right and now we're in a bit of a problematic area when it comes to some of the trans media because the the writers strike and all that stuff that sort of like really put a huge amount of delay in in Hollywood Productions and stuff like that so I got to imagine like maybe we won't see like an onslaught of it there'll be like probably a little bit of Gap like like

we saw from covet as well where we just get these kind of like hiccups uh so it may take some time but uh all right I'm gonna I'm gonna make I'm gonna call a trend shot here yeah the new transmedia play if the writer strikes last is rebooting is not as non-scripted right like in what ways could you non-script all this IP bring all the the uh all the The Improv style actors and see what I mean like which ones could you turn into reality shows like like Gran Turismo post writer strike is an actual racing competition right like well I was gonna say like the actual Source material for this movie you actually just turn that into a TV show you get a whole bunch of competing and then put them in real cars if you remember with kovid NASCAR had actual drivers playing the game during covert when people weren't racing right so take that mindset take that covid mindset and apply it to a writers and actor strike I

I think you know you then expand that out and you have your new cooking show that first off you play cooking mama and then you go and do real cooking and see who does better The Gamers versus real chefs we'll see that maybe is like a Netflix show or something instead of a movie you know you never know but I mean like we'll get to the Netflix uh part later on too which which goes the other direction right so that should be really interesting to dive into like as a big contrast uh to that I mean there's there's a lot of cool stuff on the top and I imagine like some of the other topics we'd be talking about lately one that's going to come up quite often in fact it's going to be ventured again I think here a couple of times throughout this episode in terms of how couple different topics so like I you know I'm excited to see some of the good ones obviously I expect uh some there will be some bad ones right like I'm expecting uh uveable to come out of retirement or anything and uh that tax loophole is closed so probably won't get any of those kind of Productions anymore but you never know right like we've definitely had these sort of heydays for video game movies where they were like big for a minute and then like after a couple flops people kind of backed off

uh to be fair though some of those weren't so great and that was like in the earlier days when they didn't really know how to fan service it all that well and it didn't have the rich history because video games were newer right like Mario Brothers wasn't that old at that time now Mario Brothers had a rich history to fan service and so I think that is probably going to be a little bit differentiator but I mean we've got like the Twisted Metal TV show at this point like it's all over the place right like this one we we rarely even mentioned uh so even it's that pervasive now even recently though they certainly have been some missteps I I think most people remember the Sonic Mouse issue yes but it was I mean they had to given the amount of blowback that they received from the fans when fans saw that it was just like what are you doing like that it became a great joke in another fan service movie though the rescue race won that was so like it actually even got used in another fan service thing so it's yeah it's you know if they roll with it I think there's there's recoverability and that proved that like it actually was probably a

good idea to get it out there early get some reaction from the fans and see whether or not you're headed in the right direction with time to correct it obviously it probably was not cheap to correct it that quickly uh but it worked right like in that movie got a sequel and I'm sure it pretty sure it has a green third one so I mean it's keeping Jim Carrey busy so at least there's that right oh absolutely oh yeah I mean that is definitely an example of a very successful uh case where where property's been brought to uh to film and done really well it seems like it would be pretty hard to turn into a movie think about it right like that one really doesn't lend itself to a whole lot of like Story I mean not that to be fair there's like Sonic Adventure games and there's like the comics all that but let's be honest like uh after like three or four different cartoons with no coherent plot I don't think they were going to come up with a movie with a coherent one very easily so I I mean kudos to the writers on that one for for pulling it off but uh yeah I mean we've also got some other like transmedia related IP here uh related to

Savvy gaming group and uh their sort of participation in embracers fun yeah so the history here is this is kind of like new information on old news right so if you go way back to the history about the middle of 2022 Savvy in their sort of acquisition Investments spree bought about an eight percent stake in embracer I think for about a b about a billion dollars and then it appears that that proceed was used to buy Lord of the Rings IP uh limited run games Tomb Raider Deus Ex right the you know that money was spent sort of expanding the embracer IP you know catalog and then you know Savvy by scopely for about five billion dollars and you know in in in the giant picture the Saudi fund has committed about 38 billion dollars to gaming so that that's the back story right and then I think May Embrace their sort of notes that a party had pulled out they do some reorganization they do some layoffs they

shut some things down but they don't name the party the new news is that apparently uncomfort firmed Savvy was the party that pulled out apparently the deal terms were about two billion dollars it was a Dev deal this time not an investment deal it appears they were going to commit about two billion dollars to Dev investment so cash but you know not buying more Equity over I think about a six-year term and it came at the end of like seven eight months of negotiation right so a hard-fought deal that apparently like went South at the 11th hour now the good news for embracers Amazon is still going to publish Tomb Raider but there wasn't any color unlike why Savvy pulled out it's unclear right it was kind of indicated if you believe what you're reading that was the 11th Hour you know the Golem game was blasted for you know having terrible reviews it released after a lot of delays was that related was that not related you know I'm I'm sure as an investor they were aware of all that so that doesn't seem like the reason so that doesn't seem like a lot of color why you know normally you might say Okay

savvy's saving the powder for like you know another scopely type deal but again if you believe the 38 billion dollars like another two billion dollars isn't going to keep you from buying something else so was it sort of like a strategic fit issue was it like you know at some point they're trying to figure out how to put these assets together you know and and matching devnead with like IP and release schedule and didn't make a lot of sense you know no color on that but you know we we have a little bit more information on you know the gut punch that embracer took I got I wonder if the um the silence on it was that because it was just something dumb and something no one really wants to readily admit to or we'll find out about it in a tell-all book in 20 30 years from now from someone at Savvy or embracer what I what exactly happened I I do wonder if that deal like started off too partially after seeing how much money like Amazon speaking of Amazon was spending on their Lord of the Rings show like where it was just like oh cool is this also going to be a transmedia play that's like a big uh commercial for this for you know

these franchises to go and then it's like that got some backlash and then like the Golem game and it's like maybe it was a situation where they just felt like maybe Lord of the Rings isn't going to carry into the future as as much as we hope it would or maybe they just like saw a better investment we're just like you know actually we could spend this 2 billion over here like because they're kind of throwing money around a lot of the time right like uh so a situation where they just might have saw a deal with better returns perhaps I mean I'm not sure how the deal was structured to know what kind of like backouts they could do and stuff like that right right and by the way we also don't know how much of that 38 billion dollars actually landed with Savvy or how much access Savvy has to you know what percentage of that 38 be right I guess we'll see yeah and I mean if you look at a lot of their investment has certainly been on the Strategic side where they've done investments in Nintendo and Electronic Arts and uh Activision you know they're certainly looking at where can they put their money in in those safe bets um and you know gotta wonder you know as you guys were saying was it a case of

they they saw the potential for a different bet to make rather than Embrace her you know embracer is certainly seen a lot of growth but that has been through you know you know acquisition it's been through m a rather than through organic um and maybe the question started coming up you know are they going to see enough of a return in in backing uh something like embracer yeah like I said I imagine we'll find out like at some point right because this even this detail right like slowly eventually came out it was just a mystery before so you know it's a question of whether or not like it's exciting enough to talk about when we actually do find out right uh whether anyone cares at that point but it is a pretty big deal right because that's when we saw embracer kind of like started going to like the sort of restructuring mode and now they've just you know closed down their internal Studios I believe and it's just it's been like not a lot of great news from Embrace us since then I mean hasn't been the worst either right they don't they don't look like in this huge downturn or anything but they've had to like you know ride the ship a little bit since then when it was just like okay that

money is not going to come in I mean we don't know if that was like directly the reason why they did a bunch of stuff but it the timing definitely speaks to like okay well maybe we were hoping on that to kind of keep things going the way they were going but it's not going to happen so we gotta like adjust things a bit uh but that's prudent right like it's good that they did that that they didn't just be like well we'll find another two billion somewhere else right like uh it seems like that was the smart move yeah now is not the time to be Wishing on easy money coming in uh you know companies certainly are going to be looking at you know how can they um you know continue to uh grow in the right areas uh and really look to conserve their cash in the other areas where they're not seeing that that potential for growth or or having the potential for being a bit of an anchor for for a company and you're seeing it across the board you know it's not just inside game studios uh you know Disney right now is going through a big thing of should they spin out all of their uh TV stations and and

get them out uh from underneath Disney so you know it's it's affecting you know not just the small to medium-sized companies inside the games industry it's affecting everybody well maybe uh embracers should start talking to play Ventures and see if they can get a slice up on three right for their next game you know because there's money floating around right and that's what it comes down to is a lot of this is like just the deciding where to put it because you know even when inflation happens inflation is happening because there's lots of money around like so there's definitely the money to be spent obviously like uh you know sought investment has been pretty huge uh it sounds like there's still money you know floating out of there uh we've got you know companies like a16z with apparently money cannons so it's just a question of like whether or not you can be attractive enough in like this environment where it's like people are at least sounds like doing a lot more due diligence uh you know that's obviously what's hurting web three right is is now everyone's actually being like wait have you made a game before like those kinds of questions are now being

asked and so that's sort of like um you know magnifying glass on these deals may you know cause more deals to fall through uh but there's still money to go around right so money has to be deployed there's still a lot of uh Venture Capital even like it going into web 3 eventually that was like mandated too but just hasn't been so it's it seems like we're in kind of a weird timing point for games right like games are being kind of like little spot there's still money to be deployed there's still technology that's really cool there's there's platforms uh and some of the consoles are like a little bit in their later stages now uh we don't know what's gonna happen with cloud gaming like there's it seems like a lot of question marks which of course you know it's part of what this podcast is for uh to discuss those question marks as often as possible but uh I I am interested to see how this kind of develops over the next year when it comes to funding in general because it seems like some of it's gonna have to get figured out or people are just gonna have to play some bets right yeah yeah and do you expect those to happen like the no one's expecting the industry to contract like everyone now is expecting the

industry to continue on growing um at a much more reasonable rate than I think that people saw uh over covid and unfortunately had some um unfortunate comparisons in place both uh in terms of you know expecting the covid bump to continue lasting as well as those that uh you know came back more to reality which comparatively was still on on a proper uh growth path but comparative to covid was uh certainly down from expectation so it certainly has been challenging time but I think we're slowly getting back to a little bit more of a normal uh is it normal sure the new new new normal I think is where we're at the new new normal the unprecedented time for games but yeah I feel like we're still in kind of a of a bit of a Black Swan potential period so like I do feel like there's there's within the next couple years we could see some other unexpected of it maybe not to the scale of covid but something that could still affect games

drastically in some way or another but at least we've had like a you know a bit of mixed like some good news some bad news in different ways um but like obviously covet created some unrealistic expectations um but it's been interesting to see because there was a lot of speculation around sort of like uh the the idea you know games were supposed to be somewhat recession-proof but then like we we like the App Store came out during pretty much the recession last time so we didn't really get a test of is mobile part of that because of like the being more discretionary spending on in-app purchases and now we've got like web3 as part of that and it seems like now there's a lot of question marks around which aspects of gaming might be more resilient than others and because there's a broader like uh area right this is not like where it's just the Atari crash right where it's just like pretty much one system for the most part and like it crashes it's done right like we're not really in that that culture anymore we're in a much much broader game culture where it at least some sectors should be resilient to severe downturns in some way or another because

you're not going to shut down the whole game history unless people just suddenly just hate games and I I can't see that realistically happening but I mean hey we got a lot of UFO notes these days so you never know right the Alias like no no playing games yeah we'll find out the aliens actually are the people that are in control of Activision that would actually make a lot more sense than some of the decisions they make but uh we'll see when Microsoft acquires them uh whether or not uh but uh speaking of uh Zynga I guess of all people here uh coming out of out of nowhere with finally a web 3 announcement uh we you know when take two had acquired Zynga uh there was you know talk of web3 stuff this was kind of during a little bit of the Heyday around web3 but then things got pretty quiet after that Zynga didn't necessarily seem like they were like completely silent right they still had job listings for web 3 stuff they were still clearly building something but no one really knew what now they've kind of come out with something that uh in my my

eyes almost actually Sparks more question marks than answers but does does show that they're doing something so basically what we had here is is Zynga announcing Sugar Town with a series of of media like uh some YouTube videos website uh quickly launching a Discord and Twitter really trying to kind of like get attention out there as quick as possible but being something very different than what we're used to seeing from Zynga so this whole property kind of uh I guess really really looks very Yuga labsish uh take some of the theming things like that that we've seen from Yuga in terms of like the other side uh just the general Yuga Labs lore if you want to call it that there's they're sort of uh like subculture that they've sort of built around the board apes and other things like that and uh and even looking carefully at it uh through some of their media on their website stuff like that there's actually some what looks like pretty clear references to eugolab's properties that does make me think there could possibly actually be a legit tie-in here much like we saw uh from rec league uh most

recently what we talked about last week uh there was like a picture of a board ape with one of the characters uh it looked like possibly in one of the pictures there's references to the other side uh with a question mark and some of the papers there just last little what looks like Easter eggs that makes me think there might be some potential here and and I think that's actually important to note because this is a situation where if it is tied to collapse that actually then sort of justifies the style they're going for in a way that's like okay they're clearly marketing to that group of people which in a itself is already obvious but if they've got the tie-in they can kind of Leverage that but it does make me think then if you know Hugo Labs is doing Titans with them Titans with rec league does it end up stretching itself too thin as sort of a marketing vehicle and stuff like that but going to game itself we don't have a ton of deals but it sounds like again pulling out of yoga Labs Playbook where it's like a bunch of mini games supposedly it's like I don't think we'll see like a dookie Dash kind of thing coming out of this but maybe something it's somewhat you know at that level of sort of like small uh mini games things

like that and this is not really like typical Zynga style right this is uh they're they're planning on sort of doing these for nft holders basically uh explicitly stating they're kind of targeting web3 users uh with a hope to broaden out after that but they're like really limiting it and the part that really struck like seemed uh odd to me is zing is a company that's normally shooting for like a super wide funnel they're trying to get everyone they can broadest audience you know it was basically all of Facebook before and then all of the App Store like who can we get like you know everyone and their parents but this on the other hand very targeted and in order to play these it requires an nft and in typical nft uh style ten thousand is is what they're limited to and so the situation where you're literally capping your player base up front to 10 000 players and that's a very like in my opinion a very anti-zingo move so this is it thing that makes me wonder uh who is Zynga like

might actually be heading this like they they're calling the group zw3 which is supposed to represent their sort of web 3 division but it's like now that they've been kind of absorbed by take two to an extent it's like I'm not sure how their divisions work the same uh obviously this is a pretty Far Cry from Zynga poker right uh it's not clearly not targeting mobile either it's it's clearly targeting more of like a desktop at least to start with is the impression given and uh overall just like a very interesting kind of strange play and uh you mentioned take two earlier uh in transmedia and there is mention here of you know uh trying to make some trans media plays they're trying to build this as an IP much like we saw you know from board a trying to be very IP or even like pudgy penguins trying to be IP so there's definitely a lot of like IP plays in space which makes sense like if nfts are seen as Collectibles but again uh not zynga's Forte it's not like they invented Farmville they pretty much scooped it up you know like they're not that great at actually creating IP so this is a again a very out of character play for them and and I'm curious like

you know based off what you guys think about Zynga in general and take two and where this environment's at like what could really be going on internally uh with this sort of play um I mean they they brought on their VP of uh web3 what like two years ago I think it was um so you know this has probably been percolating the background for a while and and maybe it's a case of um you know they're just trying to get to the point where uh if they look at monetizing their audience they can just go okay if you just want the whales we don't want anybody else using up any of our server bandwidth we just want the whales um and you know and taking more of that approach where they're setting a uh you know you must pay x amount of dollars if you want to play type of thing so they already know that they're bringing in people of uh a certain willingness to spend um but yeah I mean you're absolutely right like I mean uh Zynga is about you know Farmville they're with Friends

games that uh reach you know hundreds of millions of people um so this is it certainly is uh I think gonna be a very interesting experiment for them and maybe why they went so small with this in the beginning because it is such an experiment for them they don't uh you know corporately they don't know how to Market to 10 000 people they know how to Market to 100 million people but they don't know how to Market to 10 000 people um so I think it's it's probably gonna be a lot of corporate learning and you know and take two also doesn't have that breadth of experience in order to drop on as well so it certainly will be in I think an interesting experiment and see how things turn out if they are indeed linked to Yuga I think for them that makes actually a lot of sense you know gives them that opportunity to to learn from teams that you know in the web 3 space that they've shown themselves of being able to um you know put a product that people are very much interested in and have

been very successful um so I you know where where it'll end up I think is is really going to be a very interesting question because yeah from from where they are right now and seeing how they approach it and where they grow yeah you raised a great point right it's whales only a viable 2023 strategy right like whales only you know board Apes feels very late 2021 right it sort of feels like out of touch of the tenor of uh of late 2023 but we'll see right like are there High arpu people left in this space I mean it is interesting to be like hey we're limiting it to 10 000 players but we're wanting 10 000 whales and as you said like maybe that is it maybe that is the more financial thing it's like if we're in a situation where user acquisition is extremely difficult right they're they're like they're they know that right I think it definitely I'm gonna know that uh maybe that maybe that's a play like to say like maybe not for mobile but maybe a play in general

future acquisition to say hey there's a somewhat captive audience without a lot of great games over here they're clearly throwing money at Yuga stuff it's not like it's gone to zero right it's clearly sustaining and it's also been potentially even if it's not directly tied into you you guys still kind of playing off that same culture and like kind of writing off the coattails of people spending I mean I feel like at this point like use kind of like almost like the Nike or something of uh of nfts and and like that sort of culture so I mean I think it makes some sense but it again like you said very much an experiment to be like hey can we get away with it and if we don't spend a ton of money on it and it doesn't work out maybe not a big and I'm curious too what take two's thinking about this whole thing where it's like you know I mean take two has some good IPS right so they're probably like okay well you know hey if you guys can create a new IP that we can use cool but if not then get back to Zynga poker or something get back to work and you know maybe the learnings from this connect can help uh Rockstar you know figure out the the all the cool

crypto stuff for GTA 6 right I don't know it'll be it'll be interesting to see I think uh what they're actually gonna do with this is it going forward right unfortunately they're Discord where they gave like a code to join their Discord it doesn't even work so couldn't even find out more if like what they were telling people yeah I think for me personally I think it'll be interesting to see how how much does it take to keep that at arm's length versus embracing it you know take two hasn't exactly jumped on to the web3 bandwagon as much as uh you know other companies like Ubisoft um you know with their initial forays into web 3 and then and then pulling back seeing some of the backlash where they're trying to incorporate nfts into some of their existing franchises and I think that really is going to be the key is that um initially as we're we're still dealing with that separation in terms of what people want to see in sort of their web 2 games versus their web free games that um you know that separation may exist I

think still for a little while where people focus on creating IP or creating experiences specifically for serving that existing web3 audience rather than trying to create something that acts as that bridge towards bringing web 2 players into more of the web 3 space I think it's a huge Trend right without being too shilly for navic right if you go back and listen to the navic conversation with John Linden right like they've done a great job sort of it's a web 2 game or a web 3 game whichever one you want it to be if you don't want it to be a web 3 game it's not a web 3 game and they don't really want to talk about it as a web 3 game right as opposed to like doubling down in web 3 and that sort of feels like the transitional path to me like if web3 scares you which is the web 2 game it's just a great great rep to him if you want it to be web three it's web three right like take your pick and and sort of like gently lead people in that direction and and again I think if you

go back and listen to Linden's conversation you get like why they picked that path yeah and I I definitely do see that it's you know in my mind it's better to say it's a game there is monetization that is you know reflective of web 2 or web3 but you know I would never actually even use those terms right right it's a game first and foremost how you want to play inside that game how do you want to you know spend your money inside the game we'll leave that up to you but first and foremost it's a game experience and that's that's the funny thing is like that's the opposite here this first and foremost it's not a game yeah it's something to buy to be part of a club and then play some games in the clubhouse while you're hanging out right like it's more like a deck of cards in the clubhouse like mini game kind of thing and that's why it reeks of 2021 to me but we'll see I mean it does make sense when you're talking about IP though like if you think about um new IPS and trying to bring over old

IPS you look at Facebook uh with Facebook gaming is a thing you know it created new IPS right there was Mafia wars Farmville all these things that weren't old IPS that were brought over and trying to bring over old IPS didn't work super great right and the same thing happened with mobile like we take two even brought over some of their their uh games or try to bring them over to mobile and like EA as well trying to bring over the premium franchises and stuff and everyone kind of learned like uh maybe we should create some new stuff for mobile and then you you know he had stuff like Angry Birds come out of it and and so maybe this is the same case obviously web3 is technically not a a platform same way but then again Facebook kind of wasn't either like so it'll be interesting to see if that ends up kind of being the dominant play like lesson learned from the last few platforms is just hey let's just start from scratch let's let's throw some stuff out there that we think is cool some neat ideas if it works works if it doesn't it doesn't then I guess that goes back to the discussion last week as well around whether or not it makes sense for reckley to not even be based off an IP developed by a company that traditionally makes most of their games off IP uh so it's I guess it's yeah it's

interesting because every aspect of this I feel like is outside of zynga's wheelhouse all together and like one more of them that I didn't even mention was the Community Management aspect right Zynga comes from like social games as we all know we're anti-social games really they weren't social games at all and mobile had basically no social component whatsoever uh despite being literally a communication device uh it's so it's it's a situation where Zynga I mean to my knowledge doesn't really have a lot of experience in quality Community Management and the web 3 aspect especially the target platform they're going for is extremely Community Centric and they can't even get their passwords working correct for Discord so this seems like maybe a little risky I will say though uh defending Zynga a little bit on the social side um they're with Friends games uh with the chat functionality inside there actually were very much Social games like there were people that use those games uh to stay in contact with

relatives and with friends very true very true so so I I will say I will give them a pass on the whiskey yeah they went entirely without hope around so absolutely yeah yeah very true I mean there was always a social aspect to them right to some extent but it wasn't a community aspect I guess is what I was really driving out like they've never done the Community Management thing and I feel like it's a very interesting like sort of opposite thing because uh and some of this is due to Discord as well but the just mobile games have like no community at all like forums basically died out pretty much I remember so often wanting to just find other people who played a game to like hang out with a former Guild or something or talk about like how to play the game or whatever there was just nothing most the time and forums were pretty abandoned and there was no real like integration there wasn't even like a lot of chat stuff till like you know game of War fire Age started really like pushing the the benefit of that sort of chat stuff uh with the translation and things like that across culture and then a lot more Guild stuff also happened to like

eventually build that but we still like most of those guilds are still running their guilds off of Discord like even to this day I got to play a game I join a guild almost always there's like a Discord Link in the uh the description for the guild or like they paste it to you and so it's like it's all kind of offloaded in obviously in the web 3 world as well uh and this is the point where like I don't think discord's really prepped to handle this uh well I've seen just continuous hack after continuous hack because I'm in most of these games discords for web3 and I see a lot of them taking over and hacked pretty frequently where you're just like seeing all these messages posted deleted posted deleted posted deleted like a war like all weekend just saw it the other day with uh with another game and it's just uh and I feel like after seeing what happened with the password thing with this like I feel like zingas might might be stepping in it a little uh unless they bring on some people that are that are experiencing this I did see job listings previously like for some web three people um so they're clearly looking to hire people with some experience I don't know about the Community Management aspect but definitely seems like an area where they could probably use some help yeah

yeah and I think it's it's really reflective of ease of use right like if you're playing computer game the ability to hop onto a Discord Channel have it running the separate window and you know being able to type away fantastic that you know getting that sort of ease of use of communication but trying to get that trying to replicate that inside a mobile game where you know you're playing probably just for a couple of minutes uh and trying to you know and you you can't swap between the game you're playing and then you know having a keyboard up so it does I don't know if you guys have ever played with anyone too with voice chat uh over mobile uh you hear a lot of fumbling a lot of wind sounds a lot of like you know smacking sounds it's it's really really awkward and so it's like as a platform it's I feel like really struggle with communication just in general like over the years I don't I don't know that that's a solved thing but it you know at least like a lot of the you know the the noise reduction and stuff on headsets has gotten better so maybe there's maybe there's hope for it in the future or maybe we'll have some AI thing that'll handle it but I don't think it'll hand

look for Zynga so yeah I guess this is a kind of wait and see situation yeah you'll have Elon musk's uh brain implants to be able to use communication on mobile yeah please let's get that going man like although I don't most people on mobile I don't want to know what they're thinking so maybe maybe not like let's let's let's have a white list instead of a block list on that one but uh speaking of new tech moving forward cool ideas Netflix trying to push into the cloud space a little bit potentially here with some game streaming and a virtual controller yeah um so it's certainly a very interesting uh last little bit for Netflix and around news and a little bit of confusion and that um because first off it started off with a news bit that there was a Netflix game controller appearing in the App Store and stating that it was to control games that are played on your TV which certainly was confusing because while Netflix didn't have any games that you could play on your TV and and when people first you know initially

contacted Netflix about it um they originally just responded with well we've got some Netflix games and beta and didn't really talk anything more about it um but shortly after that it they did come out and say that there was a limited beta test happening uh with a small number of subscribers in Canada and in the UK and that there were two games that are part of the beta uh specifically the The Narrative Adventure game oxen free by night school Studio which was a studio that Netflix purchased in 2021 I believe it was and a brand new title uh mole Hughes Mining Adventure which uh supposedly is a game mining arcade game I'm sorry a gem mining arcade game uh which is not currently available available as a mobile title so it was something that was very much created for this type of experience um and the beta test uses the Netflix game controller so uh in order to play the games you have to use the Netflix game controller they don't so apparently support Bluetooth controllers so even

though I live in Canada unfortunately I was not one has the small number of subscribers that was chosen to be able to play the games but I am interested in trying out but for me um this really does bring a couple of big questions to my mind uh first off maybe the smaller the two questions or maybe not uh in going with a virtu basically a virtual controller and that it's a you know you're using your cell phone in order to control a game um for me that has some big challenges in that you know when you're controlling you know you're using that virtual controller on a mobile game you're looking at the screen you're looking at what your fingers are you don't have any of that worry so much about a misplaced finger or thumb you know are you actually on the controllers and not versus having that split Focus between the television your screen and are you going to be able to effectively control that game you know where games where uh microseconds count in order you know

you're hitting the right button you know you're having an accuracy level uh that's really important for some games and not having that tactile feedback of being able to feel like which button are you on you know the the fact that they have uh you know certain certain features on the button so you can feel you know just by having your thumb on you know that you're on a particular button on a controller those are there for a reason so you know where your thumbs are so you don't have to look at your hands and so for me you know it's it's it kind of speaks a little bit to a while we gotta try something quick fast easy cheap you know fail fast let's just put a virtual controller out to give this a shot um but in the end will that end up actually uh impeding or or you know contributing to not as great as an experience as players could have um what are what are your guys thoughts on that like I personally think it's it is

going to be a challenge for players so having that that virtual uh input device rather than going Bluetooth quick one right before you you jump in there Jonathan is is to me that that sounds like they did the Trivia Crack game and this totally sounds like an opportunity for a You Don't Know Jack or a Scene It kind of game uh Because You Don't Know Jack already does the phone thing with the TV and the phone and seeing it seems like a great it's movies and TV like it seems like like a great fit for having the buzzer and stuff that you don't need to look at but still have that out there and those are great where it's a one button thing where you can have basically the entire screen being a button there is no missing that button right but you know the images that we've seen is you know it's very reminiscent of the Nintendo uh GameCube controller where you know it's four buttons you know it's three in an arc one in the center and you got a couple more buttons on the side and I'm gonna guess like a virtual stick in order to be able to move around um but you know again you don't you know if you're looking up at the screen you don't know where your fingers are exactly inside those space so for me

that's uh going to be an interesting thing to see how I think those are all huge challenges and to me it feels like Netflix trying to work around what are some of its inherent disadvantages in this space right so it's advantages is it's got this incredible subscriber base who have a willingness to pay and they have a lot of data around those people right and so arguably I've got some sort of a flywheel but they don't have a gaming point point of entry right so like you go through app stores and like pay those taxes do you go to console stores and pay those taxes do you want to be in the console business are you looking for like tie rates between consoles and so it appears like on paper hey a virtual controller is the perfect way around that to build the direct to Consumer relationship with the screen we already have right but you bring up all the actual just sort of like Hardware interface shortcomings with that right which really limit you into casual games right like the only games are in any way

like you know Devin you just brought up like the way where it's the least amount of problem right if you're into some sort of trivia game you've really you really don't actually have an issue with a virtual team controller with the trivia and latency doesn't quite matter so much and fine motor control doesn't quite matter so much right but if you're any kind of like quote unquote real gaming it's a completely sub par interface and so again it feels like one of those things in a boardroom which is like we've got a hundred million you know television sets in the US you know and everyone has an iPhone and we just give them a virtual controller like we've got an installed base of 100 million people but there's an interface Hardware shortcoming right and it limits the kind of like games and titles you could put in there and what Netflix is trying to do in this space still isn't clear to me and maybe it's not clear to them maybe they're testing a whole bunch of things you know but like are they

trying to build casual games are they trying to build core games who are which part of Their audience are they trying to speak to the younger part the older part are they just trying to get like greater share of time you know I remember that that classical Netflix you know I think it was a readastings quote we don't compete with you know Warner Brothers we compete with sleep right this idea that they sort of compete with anything else right like anything and everything else and like if they just get more game time like you know I remember a point when when like Activision stopped reporting in earnings reports units sold and went to like daus and Maus right so it's like Netflix just gonna go to like you know hours spent with Netflix right and if we can Peg on another 300 million hours spent with Netflix with games like that's a creative right it's churn like I can't tell like you know Amazon and apple seem to be in a lot of businesses because it's it's it's churn preventive right so is gaming churn preventive for Netflix is gaming arpu increasive right like is

gaming a standalone piano I'm still not sure right for me I'm the part that I wonder about is that do they see games as being well like a couple of things that you have Netflix uh subscribers who will uh subscribe for a month say watch this show and then they leave they come back and then they leave where uh whereas if they get a game that they really enjoy something that could you know entertain them for hundreds and hundreds of hours will they be less likely to go through that on and off so that's aiming to reduce churn right gaming to reduce churn um but uh you know I think for me one of the one of the biggest questions is um does this actually then change the types of games that they that they start making because you know if you're making a mobile game you're making a game that you know your players could be uh you know playing with for 30 seconds or a

minute you know are they waiting in line for the bus are they there was the usual saying are they just playing it in the bathroom um and that's not saying that there aren't games where people will sit down and spend hours playing but the the general mindset is generally the mobile games are games that you can play in short bursts but if you're going on you know taking the Consular PC rep there's an intentionality for going and playing like you have already decided that I am sitting down and I'm going to spend a set amount of time engaging in this activity and that does allow for more mid-core or hardcore types of games so you know are we seeing um a potential change in terms of the types of games that they're looking at making from uh you know the more traditional or more casual games they're seeing inside the mobile site space into uh more mid-core type games you see uh you know uh more like the console or or PC side

of things um but then you get right back to the but then you've got the worst controller for that type of experience that you're suggesting so I can't imagine like say for example The Stranger Things games they've had on mobile are doing anything to increase you know viewership of of stranger things on Netflix and stuff like that I don't I think their current mobile strategy isn't doing much for them personally I mean it's it's hard right if they're not releasing any data like to to back that up one way or the other but having looked at you know their mobile games even somewhat recently to kind of see which ones were even interesting to play it just it just really scatter shot thing and that the problem is they're not they're not set up to really Port those to this new TV thing where they're clearly trying to do different stuff so like they can't even Leverage What they've already spent on but I do see a huge opportunity here and I was kind of hinting at it earlier which is a little bit of multi-person spectacle and so what I mean is that like so what what I because I always play all the stuff that they put out this game like because I think it's fun to experiment with and uh they did actually have a full actual

game on there where they ported the The Telltale Minecraft story mode so they did Port an actual game if you want to call a Choose Your Own Adventure in actual game it depends on your personal taste I guess there but uh the the opportunity like with uh so like man versus wild was an interesting opportunity right where it's it's like a choose your adventure but there's a certain amount of spectacle to it where I actually will play it with the In-laws in a situation where we're all kind of like group voting but it's not a mechanism that's really set up for group voting someone has to control the controller but imagine now you've got the phone aspect uh again like I was kind of hint to get it with the the You Don't Know Jack method it or like uh you know trivia stuff or whatever a situation where there's now like multi-person interaction with your TV through Netflix in a situation where you're looking at your phone to interact and you're looking at the TV to see the result I think there's a lot of opportunity there for the way Netflix has succeeded on some stuff like even bandersnatch imagine bandersnatch where everyone watching can vote for a choice and discuss it now imagine you start porting some more social games imagine uh Cards Against Humanity ported into the TV where the TV could be the

presenter of the the black card and everyone else can kind of play their cards uh and and then one person like and everyone can kind of vote in the answer or imagine like werewolf kind of game on the TV like there's lots of opportunities for more social experiences where the TV plays a central role and that's what You Don't Know Jack demonstrated was that if like because you don't know Jack existed on consoles or like whatever but they're using the TV as like a central Focus for a group of people so there's a presenter or like a central thing to focus on and I think that's where Netflix could be an advantage because imagine you go over to someone else's house you don't have Netflix because you're like ah Netflix sucks now I don't watch anything on there you go over someone house and then you're playing these great party games with them like on their TV like man maybe I should get Netflix like Netflix is like kind of fun now like because it's an opportunity a social opportunity to show Netflix off now imagine they also sorry one last thing is they throw in like games for couples you got the whole Netflix and chill kind of thing and you've got games just targeting couples so it doesn't have to be a party situation where you're just like what should we watch I don't know let's play this game that's like meant for couples either like literally like a romantic kind of thing or you know just a game

that's fun for two people to play I think there's some opportunities here personally and I'm not sure that the The Stranger Things games are really meant to be uh stranger thing you play the game and then you go watch the show I think it's more the extension of the brand the other way so I wonder right you know with the games you do have that opportunity of EX of owning The Experience more than just the show itself so if you think about monetizing the game is the problem they're not monetized well I think they're looking at as an indirect monetization that they're keeping a subscriber in place so the reducing of the the churn side of things um but if you think of two uh like a number of movie theaters they have uh you know quiz shows that are quiz games that happen you know you download an app on your phone and then everyone in the audience is playing these games before the show starts so you have that opportunity to interact with the the content before the content starts and so yeah I can see very much see the same things you could have you

know the easy ones would be well you know here's trivia about a particular movie now I'm gonna watch the movie um you know I can see uh execs in some movie uh or some um entertainment Studios going all right so this is what we're going to do we're then going to have a quiz show after the movie and see what people think of all the different characters and everything get that you know in-depth uh feedback on something yeah but it's a game rather than you know an ABC selection of which character did you like which character did you not like what did you think of the character growth path um so Nielsen presents a trivia game um so I you know I think it certainly is will be new opportunities to to um you know uh expand what a an entertainment property is is it just a movie well no it's not just a movie it's also an interactive component it's the movie It's you know a whole bunch of

different things in one place I think it does give new opportunities in order to you know for those uh experiences for four players I'd love to know what the traction's been on the stuff that they have obviously they had the ones that were like you know really well known like bander snatch I think maybe Man versus wild probably did okay but if you like look through their selection they have like a ton of Ones for kids specifically like to like try and attract them the different ways and I think they've seemed to like shotgun a lot of it the problem is we don't really know like because they're not really telling us what aspects of that work because I'd be I'd be very interested to see like where's our where's our you know data.ai or steam charts or something for these these sorts of things to know like just just to kind of be able to see where the direction should be going because they're very analytics driven company has always been my impression that they've got the data and they're using that to drive these decisions yeah like the public side is they'll they certainly let people know what the downloads are I mean I think the last I saw asphalt was the number one downloaded game but they certainly have the analytics in

terms of well what are the games that are actually keeping players playing and I can guarantee it's not asphalt it's something else yeah I mean it all seems so I'm going to go back to scatter shot and I'm not clear like Devin like you mentioned kids you know in our house like the child share of Time on Netflix is zero right the child share of time is other places you know it's it's again the strategy is not clear this the scatter shots approach to things though is very similar to what you saw with Xbox when they first launched PlayStation when they first launched the thing that they need to do is basically cover their bases when it comes to various genres inside the experience so that they can at least say while you do want to try s over Apple arcade or the Google Play experience or things like that because yes we do offer something for kids we offer something for adults you know we we do offer something for everybody

um the biggest challenge you know is you do that initial scatter shot is getting the quality example of each of those because it's an unknown platform they're not sure you know from a game developer side it's like well you know what does that mean for me yes I'll get some money up front but I'm not going to see a big back end on it um you know there certainly are some some challenges in trying to get that breath but that's why it is a bit of a scatter shot at the beginnings because they need to be able to say well we offer a comprehensive selection of games could you imagine if like you know they they're not running ads right now right like but they find you know actually we have an opportunity to monetize through in-app purchases in these interactive games where you can purchase content like additional content or whatever like I I do wonder if we could see they they find an opportunity to do some level of you know in use financialization that they can't seem to do with their games they can't really do I mean I feel like they eventually go to ads let's be honest just because that's what Cable's

promise was was no ads and then look where they ended up look where most of the uh the streamings ended up it's it's feels a little inevitable but at the same time like maybe there's some alternative revenue streams at least from some of the audience that maybe you can slow that down without them having to constantly just raise the price of subscription oh it feels it feels so inevitable I mean the whole interesting thing about how the r poo on the seven dollars plus ads was higher than the base ten dollar no ads right I I mean you know the interesting thing about all this sort of Fallout we're seeing in the SEC right is everybody's raising prices everybody's adding ad tiers like those two things are inevitable all this free stuff is going to be less free and all this ad-free spaces are going to become ad-filled like those those two things are are inevitable yeah yeah or and it may be a case of they look at what are different ways they can incorporate ads so instead of necessarily being ads that are you know take place at break points inside the game do you

actually incorporate the ads into the game so they're they're not as disruptive in terms of flow we used to have the flash here just bring that back just bring back uh what was it seven up spot do you remember yeah cool spot let's bring back the Pepsi man from from PlayStation yep there we go why not at this rate I don't know if you guys uh have a Roku as well like if you've ever tried to go through uh the channels and you can find there's some attempts at games and of course it's about as awkward as you could imagine trying to use a Roku remote to like play a game on your TV and it's like multiply that times 10 for trying to play it on your phone screen instead and it's like I think it's pretty obvious like if you if you owe one of stevies to just see for yourself how awkward that whole experience could be even if you've done the um like the Trivia Crack ones or those other ones where you have to make choices on a timer it can be pretty awkward to even use that interface to like select something fast enough that's why I feel like you know selecting on your phone for example like having a personal

selection those kind of things does somewhat overcome those issues but again as you guys said like that's that's a pretty limited like spectrum of games and I mean I guess we'll see right like Netflix doesn't always like really like tell too much about their future strategy because a lot of it's still experimental but they're also very like that shocking approach let's try a bunch of stuff and then let's look at the numbers because you know at the end of the day as long as people don't unsubscribe from us doing it then it's worth trying it right because like that's the thing right if they're getting the subscriber numbers they don't lose people over these experiments then it's like you know as long as they don't spend too much money on them they manage that budget it actually seems like a pretty good way to do it uh because they're like oh we've got this x amount of budget for Content we can decide how we want to spend it on a bunch of different things and then try stuff I mean it's better than them just constantly looking at well Everyone's Watching Full House episodes let's just do Fuller house you know those kind of analytics obviously some of those work right they're just like hey everyone watch Adam Sandler movies Stewart Adam Sandler movie those kinds of things have worked for them right but like I don't know how that'll translate over to games and I'm really interested to see how

their methodology because you know mobile games being so you know analytics driven how that would work in like such a Content sort of centric one and obviously live Ops could be really into interesting for like TV based content that's streaming on the Fly I don't know a lot of opportunities here to see uh but I imagine we'll be back on this topic once we know a little bit more about it I I doubt it'll turn out that it's Savvy games funding it and to Lord of the Rings and all that but uh we'll be back again for this I'm sure but in the meantime I want to thank you guys for some fantastic conversation a lot of interesting questions answered and probably twice as many asked uh that will I'm sure you get back to throughout the year because a lot of cool stuff happening and that's what we're here for to highlight that stuff to talk about it and dig in and of course uh thanks to you listener for of course sticking around for this and hopefully you know past in future episodes as well if you haven't already you know make sure to also check out our digest mostly because we've been really really cranking up the content uh to make sure that your inbox is bursting with uh your backlog of

reading now at this point so so definitely make sure to get on that including your emails as well including a great article on subscriptions there you go there's one that actually just came out earlier this week talking a lot very very appropriate so definitely a lot a lot of cool stuff so make sure to check that out and of course you know uh our as I always mention are our mailbag email as well at podcastnavic.com any feedback any ideas hey if you've got some ideas for what Netflix should be doing uh for their games like please share like we'd love to hear uh ideas out there as well great feedback we've got some great questions as well on some of our previous stuff we've discussed that we try and always get back at so uh thanks you know for all those questions in future ones as well in the meantime though enjoy your weekend everybody and uh hopefully we'll see you at Gran Turismo if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast navic dot Co or

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