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The Riot Publishing Paradox and The Resurrection of Hytale
33 Plays2 days ago
In this episode, Greg and Colan break down the surprising success of Hytale after its departure from Riot Games, the strategic restructuring at Ubisoft, and the evolving multi-platform future of Xbox. Colan provides a deep-dive "dissertation" on the three eras of Riot Games publishing and explains why the studio may be "trapped by its own success".
Key Discussion Points
1. The Hytale Miracle: From Cancellation to Chart-Topper- The Buyback: After Riot Games effectively shuttered the project, the original founders bought back the rights and launched into Early Access.
- Market Dominance: Within its first weeks, Hytale ranked #4 in search and #9 on Twitch, commanding roughly 2.5% of the total gaming market.
- The China Factor: Colan highlights the massive "opportunity cost" for Riot/Tencent, noting that Hytale could have been a native competitor to Minecraft in a Chinese market with over 700 million accounts.
- The Golden Era (2019-2020): Riot enjoyed a historic run with "heaters" like Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, and Legends of Runeterra.
- The "Trapped" Success: Colan argues that Riot is now bloated by the weight of its own success; the immense resources required to maintain massive live-service hits prevents them from taking bold risks on new IP.
- Riot Forge Lessons: Why Riot’s attempt to release smaller "love letters" to the community failed to act as a funnel for new players.
- Cancellations & Restructuring: Ubisoft has canceled six games, including the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, while mandating a 5-day return-to-office policy.
- The Global Shift: An analysis of why game development is shifting from expensive hubs like California to subsidized regions like Riyadh.
- Highguard’s Attention Deficit: Despite viral memes, the game lacks measurable player attention, making it a high-risk launch in a genre dominated by Apex and Overwatch.
- The Case for Marathon: Colan remains "bullish" on Bungie’s Marathon, predicting it will successfully claim a "bronze medal" spot in the extraction shooter hierarchy.
Featured Quotes
"Riot is first-in-class at maintaining live ecosystems, but that success becomes a weight. Why risk anything when you have a thing you can monetize forever?" — Colan NeeseResources & Links
- Colan’s Newsletter: Subscribe to "Patch Notes" on Substack or LinkedIn for the full dissertation on Riot's publishing history.
- Player Driven Workshop: Sign up for next week’s player experience session at PlayerDriven.io.
- DICE Summit 2026: Catch Greg and Colan live in Las Vegas next month.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Player Driven Live. We are here on a Friday. I am ah Greg Posner and I'm with Colin Meese. Colin, you want to say hi? Hey, what's up? What's up Greg? What's up up, those who watch us live and those who maybe watch us afterwards audio-wise? i don't know if that's a thing yet, but hey, happy Friday to all y'all.
00:00:18
Speaker
happy friday we are coming to you from a friday today instead of a thursday pocket gamers london has thrown off my timing but we are back and maybe friday will do us even better you know maybe we'll find that friday is our groove and we can do that so here at least colin you know you're from sunny california we're about to prepare for like foot of snow in new jersey um any big plans this weekend um What am I doing this weekend? um No big plans this weekend. I think I'll be playing a lot more Lego Star Wars, the complete Skywalker saga with my little guy, since we are now in the process of finding
00:00:56
Speaker
blue bricks there's so many blue bricks in that game man you're just like playing two player co-op he's just general grievous just killing all the clone troopers because he thinks it's funny and then i'm just running around trying to solve these like really easy puzzles but there's just so many of them so many puzzles they're like it's just it's a lot man so good times that's probably what i'll be doing somewhere that's when batman comes out Lego Batman comes out in May. May is packed, man. We should, we should, can talk about that in a minute, but I think, uh, fours are coming out in May now. Um, it's packed May.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, first off, we had game announced. Lots in the gaming news this week. Let's kind of break down the agenda of what we want to talk about today. New stuff will fall into as we're talking, I'm sure. But we want to talk about, if you weren't here in the very beginning when Colin spoiled it all, purposely, sorry. We're talking about Hytale, HighGuard, Ubisoft, DICE, PGC. We're going to talk about Microsoft. They had an event yesterday saying and then announced games. Who thought Microsoft would have games again? But here we are. Um, there's just been so much great stuff in gaming this week. There's been some unfortunate new stuff with the Ubi stuff stuff, but anywhere specific you want to start today, Colin?
00:02:08
Speaker
Um, you know, let's, you know, let's, let's try to compliment sandwich this. So maybe not start off with the sad news. Let's, let's start off with the, uh, I would like to talk about Hytale, but I actually want to hear how pocket gamers went. so im actually going to go there first, Greg, what was going on about gamers? What was the vibe out there in London this year?
00:02:26
Speaker
So I've been to a couple of Pocket Gamers events in my lifetime, but this is the first time I went to Pocket Gamers London. So for those who are listening, Pocket Gamers is much more of a B2B industry style conference. And it's very it was originally very heavily mobile focused. So it started with mobile gaming, but then they started branching into console gaming. But mobile is still the primary part of the business. So a lot of the stuff you see there has to do more specifically with mobile gaming than console gaming. But the three big trends to me that really stood out were... There's a new concept in mobile gaming called direct-to-consumer, DTC. Have you heard of that at all, Colin?
00:03:03
Speaker
I mean, that's Netflix's entire business model, so I'm very aware of DTC. Well, you you know it like that. But what direct-to-consumer in the terms of mobile business is that in the past, if you have a mobile game, anytime someone makes a purchase, you have to pay the App Store their fee, and typically it's about 30%. And there were ah people out of the app store.
00:03:24
Speaker
But now, because i think I think the EU led the way because they seem to be the only ones that lead the way in these types of things, you say they now provide ways that you have to allow people to bounce out of the mobile experience in order to make a purchase, meaning that mobile studios no longer have to pay those app fees. What they have the ability to do is say, hey, click here and come to our player portal, you bounce out into their website. Then all of a sudden, this studio has the ability to collect all this data and metadata about you, and they no longer have to pay that app store fee.
00:03:56
Speaker
Meaning, in theory, and I say this in theory because this doesn't happen in real life, they could, in theory, lower the prices because they don't have to have to pay that fee anymore. They can also potentially...
00:04:08
Speaker
put more per purchase. So maybe I'm not going to my feebo, give you 30% more coins if you pop out of here. And there was about seven different companies there that provide these mobile storefronts. And if you've ever played, like, I think you were, you're a Clash Royale player. I was a Clash Royale player and I was a Marvel Snap player. I am mobile. I am not, have i do not have a mobile game in my life right now, but I love Supercell is one of the ones that led the way on this. they started these They started these player, basically, web apps way before anyone else. So when you go to Supercell, if you ever click, hey, I want to go to my player, put my it pops you out of the game.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah. Isn't that powered by Xola? Xola one of those. so these companies are also called Merchant of Records, which is important because if you're this small indie studio from Texas that's building a game, you may not know the tax laws of South Africa or the... Middle East, right? So these Merchants of Records deal with all the compliance side of things. So that makes it really easy that you can just do your day job and then they'll handle all that. So yeah, you have XSOL, you have a company called Breeze, you have AppCharge. There's a whole bunch of them out there and they're all growing with momentum right now because no one wants to pay that App Store fee and now they basically have their app.
00:05:22
Speaker
you make They're not a charity. What's the solo fee or what's these fees? What's the fee like? Do they talk about that publicly? They do. You can look it up. but A lot of them are probably between 5% and 10%. um So significant savings on top of that. But I mean, it also comes down to the data you can get about your players. Once they pop out, you kind of have access to other types of data. and You can really start to build out those profiles. So in my mind, that was like the number one thing at this conference is that if you look at like there was this company AppCharge, they were the biggest sponsor there.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah. They had like this machine shredding $100 bills. right and like They're just showing you you're wasting your money when you're on these app stores because you have to pay that fee and now you don't have to anymore. Did they all have a giant gold statue at each booth for Tim Sweeney, who is the reason why this exists? he he is the he We've talked about this before on on this show, but we you know I firmly believe both two things at once, that Tim Sweeney is a hero to the gaming industry, and then we should put a monument to him and a gold statue somewhere for moving this at-fee thing forward at the same time. It's completely value-destructed at Fortnite, and and I don't think they'll ever call that value back. But...
00:06:31
Speaker
Doesn't matter because the gaming industry now can shred $100 bills in a in a in a paper shredder to get people to move off of the App Store ecosystem into the into whatever these startups are. So good for innovation. I got to tip my hat. you know nothing Nothing like a free market to kind of see who wins and who doesn't win. Will Apple still win at the end of the day? Maybe. Will Exola or these other companies win? Maybe. you know But at least it's a competition now and not on monopoly. so The second thing that was...
00:07:00
Speaker
really big and something we've spoken about many weeks is transmedia and how dominant transmedia is in enforcing gaming right now and how there's kind of this race to figure out how you centralize this content? How do you find a place to kind of say, hey, these are the clips I can use, can't use. And I don't know if you're a TikTok user, right? But the way TikTok signed the deal, I think it was with Sony to implement Sony music or maybe Universal Music into their catalog, right?
00:07:31
Speaker
How do you have a bigger platform that can allow you to use these pieces of content without having to hijack it do something with it? But transmedia was on everyone's mind and everyone was talking about it.
00:07:44
Speaker
And I know you're a fan transmedia. I think we kind of dabbled on it again last week. Yeah, I'm a fan of these things having another lane to exist in from a story-telling perspective, and I'll consume it. i'm a guy i'm interested watching um you know I'm interested in watching the Sonic movie because my kids are really interested in Sonic. So that is going to kind of be a driving force for me to check out Sonic 4 when it comes out, I think, in 2027. Or the new Mario movie, maybe a more kind of upcoming one like that. Definitely we'll go see the Mario movie with Baby Bowser, as my kid calls it, i Bowser Jr., here in the near future so yeah fan um and works like you know fallout drives people to play the fallout game um and so it's beneficial not just to hollywood who's just desperate for new stories to tell with pre-built fans in them which is gaming is exactly that but also for the gaming companies trying to drive another form of exposure because getting attention is really hard or really expensive and
00:08:42
Speaker
This at least is a de-risked proposition where your IP and all the marketing for that content is going to be taken on by this movie or TV studio. And so to me, it's all basically content marketing at the end of the day. Can you turn your IP, make it content marketing to drive people back to trying out your game? Now, some are better than others. I think Mario probably, you know, Fallout may fall. it's a really good example. People will watch fall out and they played the game. So it's accessible. League of Legends and Arcane, definitely less so. So as good as that show was, it did not do much to bring people to League because League is a hard thing to get involved in unless you have an on-ramp into League.
00:09:21
Speaker
Well, you have to also remember, it's not about bringing necessary players into the game, right? It's giving people who won't play games another outlet to be able to start spending money on the franchise, right? And that's part of it too. fall out but That's part of it too, for sure.
00:09:33
Speaker
Yep, yep. I would agree with that. The last big thing, well, sorry, to going back to that. I think the biggest opening we talked about that with indies is creating lore, right? if you're creating an indie game and you can start a discord up and you can start kind of interesting people with this lore, they're going to want to help contribute to this, right? And this is how you start to build kind of a community and then you can build UGC type of stuff on that. There's so many small communities I'm a part of that are building RPGs. and People are creating their own backstories for these users. People create art for their users. like It's insane, these fandoms that people can create with these studios. So obviously the top are going to benefit. You have your Bonds, your Tomb Raiders, your Fallout that are going to benefit from transmedia because everyone knows those IPs. But you also have these smaller indies that might have a better chance of making it in the industry because they'll find these fandoms of diehard players that are willing to do this. And it's just super cool. And this would be that perfect segue to...
00:10:29
Speaker
Hightail because you know this is what you need when you have that community, that fandom, people will build stuff for your game. and when you have people building that stuff for your game, it creates more engagement for your game. And it's this you create this cycle. and i I know there's a word for it. This perpetual cycle of content that people are playing.
00:10:45
Speaker
fly will say fly will much better word um and before we jump into hightail the last big thing and i mean it's just there's optimism everyone was excited about coming into this year the the ethically blah blah blah i think at the end of 2025 or all of 2025 we saw indies starting to make it and do great and not only that we've seen triple a titles doing well again i mean battlefield and you know my love of battlefield right like the Top game in the U.S. s last year, 25.
00:11:14
Speaker
they Came out from Sakana. And I think 2026 is that year where gaming is going to do it. And you know the problem is it sucks. I mean, again, another segue point. Ubisoft just laid off tons of people. They closed studios. And it's just like, that sucks. But I do think there's optimism out there. And I think the gaming sector is going to start to really rebound this year. We're go to see a lot of great stuff coming out.
00:11:38
Speaker
Wow, where to even jump in on that? Let's let's go to Hytale. That's a successful story. so you know i think we touched on it last week of the week before, but like the story of Hytale, the game was cancelled from Riot.
00:11:50
Speaker
You know, the summer pass into the fall, still lot of community heartbeat going on. People were really upset that the game was was basically shuttered and killed and killed off after Riot had purchased them back in 2020. And then the founders came out in November, said, oh by the way, we're able to buy back our game and hire 30 developers from the original team. And we're going to basically put out our game in January and early access, you know, come support us by the early access player game. We're gonna build with you guys over time. Fast forward to clearly what's happened. um
00:12:20
Speaker
Based on our assessment, they are the first 18 year game of the year, um which, you know, I'm sure it was on no one's bingo card. And there's a lot to kind of kind of piece through that. But they, like in our rankings, you know, based on our data sets, they were nine on Twitch last week, number four on search and number 10 on YouTube, culminating about two and a half percent of the entire gaming market, which is crazy. It's like, what ah what an amazing, successful launch of a little indie game, indie sandbox game, Hytale, which again, they were not indie because they got bought by Riot. Now they are indie because now they're owned by themselves. so um So awesome, awesome to them. But like,
00:12:57
Speaker
I don't know. For me, I wrote, shout out to Patch Notes, my newsletter that I now have on Substack, PlayerDriven, I think repost the stuff. So if you want to check it out there, it'll be there at some point. And then LinkedIn, where the kind of majority of my readership is. But anyways...
00:13:12
Speaker
I had to go backwards and like dig into like what happened with this game. Because you know here's like staggering numbers in my research. So did you know, I've always said this, but like Minecraft is literally um what one of the biggest, the biggest or the second biggest game the world, depending on the week, not not Roblox, right?
00:13:31
Speaker
And you go, well, how is that? Well, it sold 350 million copies worldwide. And China alone has over 700 million registered accounts to Minecraft.
00:13:42
Speaker
This game is huge in China, but it's not owned by any Chinese conglomerate. But they did own it. They own this little game called ideal. And i won't go, I'll go backwards into like what I think happened based on my research and just digging into this a little bit and always open to the community feedback on this. Cause I don't know what I don't know, but,
00:14:03
Speaker
You had the opportunity to basically be the Minecraft native to China. like much like Instead of relying on the massive Western platform owned by Microsoft out of you know the Nordics, I forget what country it is. Is it Swedish or Norway um for or Finland for Minecraft, Mojang? But you had it, and then you let it go, and then it's it's out. and like And when I say you let it go, like if Riot owned it outright or Tencent owned it outright,
00:14:30
Speaker
They have a backdoor easy entry point to China. Like, great. Game works. Into China you go, right? like And it would probably grow like wildfire there. So like whatever losses they were making trying to make this game, the pipe was right there to just make all the money back almost within the first six months, if if if not less, right? if If these type of games are so popular in China, which they are, and you have another option to compete with Minecraft, and you are owned in part by the Chinese ecosystem, let's say, and the CCP, then I think you had a a win there that you just kind of let pass you by, right? Clearly because it just did really well at launch. um So that's my framing on that. It's just like, what how did this this like opportunity cost just slip them by? And then in my ah my typical fashion, Greg, i I had to then go backwards and dissect Riot's entire publishing efforts since 2019 because i'm an I guess I'm a crazy person. i had to go backwards and be like, were they ever good at publishing games? Was this like a mistake acquisition from the get-go?
00:15:30
Speaker
And then you kind of come to this like kind of realization and it's somewhat disheartening and also completely logical. But I'll pause. i want you to comment on anything I just said to start things off on this topic.
00:15:41
Speaker
You like, so you're much more bullish on Hytale than I am. And I'm not not bullish, right? Like, i love the story. I think it's a great story. But when you're a game that's relying on content to be king, and there's no content in there, I'm not saying there's no content yet, right?
00:15:57
Speaker
I think someone actually just made a mod that actually lets you mod content or like transfer content over from Minecraft to Hytale, which... I mean, if you look at To Steal a Brain Rot, right, that started on Roblox and if someone created a tool to move it over to Fortnite and that didn't quite work out. I did not see you coming with the China data and that's where you like put me into a corner i'm like, damn, he got me there. But, you know, it's fast... I'd love to hear your breakdown on Riot because Riot really does got their shit together, right? They they know what they're doing. So it seems, right? it And...
00:16:34
Speaker
i Yes, you know, I think it is that Riot gave up on them, gave up on them. um And that's where the story is generating from. That's where that momentum is. And now the question is, do they catch fire from that momentum, which you're seeing in the mind game data that they are catching fire from it.
00:16:51
Speaker
But then you got to get it going. They already, well, two things can be true. Like, can you have a wildly successful launch? Yes. Does that launch sustain in nine months? Who knows? Like that's a, that's a separate question, right? but They've had a wildly successful launch, which just shows that there was the opportunity was there to be had. Right. But like going backwards, Yeah, so I think Riot is both good and it's also not so good, but it's not entirely Riot's fault per se. it's more the It's more the evolution of a company um and like the constraints you have via the successes you have. I'll maybe put it kindly like that. so
00:17:28
Speaker
I went backwards. And so I broke right down into what I would call three eras. And like one was the golden era of publishing, as silly as it sounds, but like they did have one. And then there's the kind of... I'll call it the Riot Forge era. I don't know how familiar with Riot Forge, but i spent a lot of time kind of digging into that ecosystem a bit. And then now comes the post-Riot Forge. We're going back to publishing with like lukewarm results so far. um But going to the golden era, like...
00:17:57
Speaker
Forever Riot Games was literally the i I've been in this space for a while and we to always joke when I was at Twitch like it's not Riot Games is Riot Game and that's like a kind of I believe a joke in the industry like they made one game was League Legends and it was wildly successful and they were very public about like not wanting to make a another game very quickly like we want to make League Legends the best thing it could be that was kind of the talk track from Brandon and Mark and any other executive that would be quoted from Riot. They were very much like tunnel vision on, we are going to make the game that we make, right? That's all we need to do.
00:18:27
Speaker
But clearly sometime in the 2010s, they started developing games. And out of that comes what I call a heater, right? First game they launched, Teamfight Tactics in June of 2019. um Did very well. um Was one of the top, if not the top game of that particular month. And like was, I would say the fourth best ah launch of the kind of Riot publishing era to then. And then fast forward into 2020. So almost a year later.
00:18:51
Speaker
And this their real heater starts. They launched Legends Ruterra, which had a really solid launch. Followed by the all-time heater in June of 2020, Val. Or Valorant, right? Where...
00:19:01
Speaker
Boom. That just changed the entire ecosystem. Their closed beta had over 1.7 million concurrence on Twitch alone. like And so they just won that. Now you could say, oh that game hit like it did because it was COVID. Sure, but they designed built the game pre-COVID. So like the game was in... like They just put it out right at the onset of COVID when everyone trapped inside. Yeah, they probably saw some upside, but like blew the doors off. And then ending this heater run, they had Wild Rift, which is the mobile version of League, which...
00:19:30
Speaker
I'll be kind and say they will say that they were trying to make the best MOBA possible on mobile phone, but they were like half a decade late to market. Like Honor Kings obviously beat them, but their own company put out a MOBA on top of ah Mobile Legends Bang Bang. Also beat them to market by ah half a decade. So they were not the first or second mover. They were the Johnny come lately, but they brought the IP. And I think that game has done fairly fine for itself in post-launch. Like it's still, you know, trends in our tool as like one of the top games. So my point in being with all this is like when you, if you're, if you're a company, you're not just releasing like EA, you're putting out a game and you move on or broadly, you move on to the next game and the next game where you take two interactive, you put out a game and move on the next game, next game. When you're Riot, you put out a game and then you now have success. And now you have to build an entire organization around that game to then staff it forever. Cause you have to keep the engine going. Like you build Valorant. So you have to do seasons and arcs and,
00:20:25
Speaker
You have to get more heroes, on and on on forever. And that's true for every game they put out because they are only putting out live service games. And so I think part of the challenge that kind of handled, like what happened with kind of good jump ahead to Hytale is like they're trapped by their own success. Like they got bloated as an organization because, and rightfully so, because they these multi-million billion dollar franchises that they had basically created that they had to build, sustain, and keep going and going going. So a lot of these decisions were, well, we have to prioritize the thing we have that's making us a lot of money as opposed to prioritizing bets in the future because we don't need bets. We have the thing we have now. We got to make that the best thing possible for our community. So like, I think that's what happened. So I think,
00:21:07
Speaker
In part, what they tried to do was go in the right way. First, I'll pause it. But, like, come on, man. That's a heater, right? Going through that publishing run through 2019, 2020. Yeah. I mean, you know, not only that. You talked about the games. You can talk about the transmedia side as well, right? I know Arcane didn't do what they wanted to to bring more players to League. But it blew up on Netflix and people loved it, right? that They crushed it.
00:21:32
Speaker
I know, right? That's part of it, too. And so I think you enter this, like, then they yeah they go to Riot Forge, where they know they can't build everything internally, basically, so they offer the unwrap to external, and they state it as, Riot doesn't make games that are traditional, completable games. We make forever games, so we're going to use the Riot Forge umbrella to basically give smaller developers a shot to use our IP to then make them a kind of single-player or, like, single-experienced games that have a finite conclusion, right? And so...
00:22:01
Speaker
They start that going, and they also around the same time, granted 2020, they bought Hypixel and the people behind Hytale, right? They bought it. They had invested in it before and seeded around investor, bought it, brought it in-house. Now they were trying to basically leverage outside via acquisition developers to build the next game and or partner developers to build the next game. And like, this is where you get in the muddled, like,
00:22:20
Speaker
nothing hit for them like a whole string of titles that nothing really really broke through ruined king probably the best success they had but you know a bunch of other titles came out over the next five years granted this is you know just covered era stuff but like they never broke into the top 10 15 games in their launch month respectively and i haven't tried my article about that but they never broke two now One side would say, well, they never were meant to because, you know, these games were, these are love letters to our community. they were never meant to be that big.
00:22:50
Speaker
But like the other side me is like, well, aren't you making these games as an on-ramp to new players who might not want to play Valorant, but you're trying to get players who are into rhythm games or into platformer games or into r RPGs? Like, So, sure, you want to level it community, but like ultimately, if that's what your aim is, they're not going to play it that much because they're already in the ecosystem you built them with Valorant and League Legends, etc., etc. So, you're like, stealing is pretty finite there. So, they should have acted as acquisition funnels to new players. They just...
00:23:19
Speaker
didn't I think they relied on their own ecosystem to draw players in. i don't think they spent a lot of money marketing on it because you can go in the data and they never broke into top 100 or he oftentimes 150, 200 in any of our channel rankings during their launch window, which is insane, right?
00:23:33
Speaker
can buy attention. They have bought attention. like And they just put nothing behind these games. At least nothing that was visible in our data. It's kind of like a a sad lesson of just like, well, makes sense why they closed it because these games weren't like basically popping. So Riot Forge gets closed in 2024 and they're back to trying to publish games themselves with the first ones being like Valve Mobile and 2XKO.
00:23:56
Speaker
you know I go back to kind of these forever games, and League isn't a forever game, but for some reason the players play forever, and they aren't going to leave. Is it possible just the fan base of Riot is just so entwined in the games that they don't want to try anything? Was it 2KXO or 2XKO? I always mess it up. 2XKO.
00:24:18
Speaker
right They were trying a new new genre with, the I think, the League IP. just because people love it doesn't mean they're a jump genres to a whole different class of games.
00:24:29
Speaker
And is it just that their own success, and kind of what you're saying, is shot them in the foot because their players are still playing their games? I mean, and that's, I think my, one of my main takeaways, if I were to summarize it in a sentence, it's like Riot, you are first in class at building and maintaining these live ecosystems. Like your retention on Valorant, League Legends, even Wild Rift, like incredible, like Other publishers want one of those games and you have three of those games. So like that's a, that's an incredible capability that ride has. Once I have a forever game, they can just keep it going for literally forever and make it a big thing. But I think with every forever game you have at riot, like in probably true to any organization, it becomes an await. Like it's like a, yeah, we're making a lot of money, but then the way to focus on the next thing is just less there because you just become so big. If that makes sense. Like you become so, bloated and a lot of decision making boils down to well the opportunity cost is like we have this thing that we can monetize forever so why are we even trying to risk anything by doing the next thing and like so 2x can was interesting because it didn't break in like we would call its launch last year sure console launch is going to launch in january if they blow up i will i will stand on social platforms to eat a bag of crow and say i guess we were wrong on this one But all the signs say we're not going to be. It's going to be on par with ah multiverses, which is really interesting because that was WB's attempt at a live service fighting game. And that is a dead game now. So if they're trending to be multiverses,
00:26:00
Speaker
are you not not great. um But this launching so close to what ended up being Hytale, like if they were more daring or more bold, would the people at Riot just put out Hytale and early access? Sorry, jumping around the story. But the problem I kind of what I gleaned and I would open anyone from either company to tell me if I'm right or wrong is they were trying to build on Hytale came with one engine, right? Want them to build another engine, the migration to the other engine basically was becoming incredibly challenging. it was probably trying to do too much when HyPixel bought themselves back from Tencent Riot.
00:26:34
Speaker
They basically reverted the entire build back to the original thing that they had already put that out and that's what they're running with. they're like, you know what? Nevermind the new thing. We're done onto the old thing. We'll improve this thing that we've built already now.
00:26:46
Speaker
And, I'm sure that's a tale as old time in game dev, but like that's kind of seemingly what happened. and It's an interesting thing. Riot could have just not let Perfect wait on good or good enough and that bold decision-making.
00:27:00
Speaker
with the Because Riot saw the spike they had, which the spike they had for Hytale was on par with all all the other specs we saw from riots like Golden Era Publishing, they could have then jump dumped the money train on them. Like, we have something, put the money behind it gas on the fire, proof of concepts out there.
00:27:16
Speaker
Let's just build, build, build, build. build You know, like yeah things that, you know, we just have to track for what the next few weeks and see which direction it goes. It comes down to content. And is it going to be enough reason to my whole idea is it enough to get people to turn off Minecraft to turn on Hytale? Right. That's what it comes down to. And people are calling it Minecraft, too. And that that worries me to call it Minecraft, too, because when ah anyone always says,
00:27:40
Speaker
Oh, this is the Uber of this app, or this is the Uber of this vertical. No, you need to create something that's yours. Don't say you're the Uber of this. Don't say you're the Minecraft of this. right It comes down to content, because content is king. so Will people create the content? Will they go there?
00:27:54
Speaker
I haven't played the game yet. I heard it was buggy, but people saw the potential there. um and just i mean Of course it's buggy. They they shipped it in like six weeks. It's insane. they They ripped it and moved it back. But My point being is even if it declines, the fact that it had such a pop at the beginning um would have been the proof point that Riot would should have not given up on it because they had the resources to move fast, make more content, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like there's a scaling factor that they have that they're really good at as
00:28:25
Speaker
evident by the different live service games they operate now that I it's just like it's an opportunity cost for both sides. It sucks for if if Hytale can't Max can't sustain its momentum and keep a really core happy player base and grow over time.
00:28:39
Speaker
that sucks i think they would have had a better shot had they just put out this version at riot and built on it flip side riot this game is going to sell more copies than 2x ko ever will or have more players so just take that as we will so that's that that that's the sad uh that's the truth of it but you know it's exciting i just like unpacking these things and i like to build my hypotheses of what i think is happening so um that's my That would be my POV on Hytale and Visa Riot. and I wrote about it today. So you got basically my whole gist. But if you want to spend an hour reading my lengthy dissertation paper, it's on LinkedIn, Substack, Player Driven, and all the places. Your patch notes, I love them. they' They're not patches anymore, like full-on development cycle. teach know I should probably change the name. Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker
Fair enough. I'm going to let you choose a card here. Do you want to go with the negative story or the question mark story? um Let's keep negative for me, positive for you. Let's talk about Xbox. We have to. um You look.
00:29:40
Speaker
Did I watch the Fable trailer yesterday? Yes. Did I go, huh, that's interesting. I might be interested in playing this when it comes out. Yes, I will admit that. You know what mostly got me excited, Xbox fanboy Greg? yeah It's on my PlayStation.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah, man. That's what I care about. you know who You know who else gets excited about that? Who? Xbox. Like, hell yeah. He's still buying our game. He doesnt even have our console. We don't even have to pay for hardware anymore.
00:30:09
Speaker
Oh, my God. Well, I mean, they're still trying to ship hardware. Don't tell them that. Do you think they're going to come out next-gen hardware, or do you think just throwing the towel on this, and they're just like, we're sorry? Someone on TikTok has been like messaging me nonstop about that. We were talking about the Steam machine. He's like, oh, the next Xbox will be more powerful. I'm just like, what? Who's even talking about that? I don't think we're going see a next generation of consoles probably until, i don't know, 28. I mean, RAM prices are outrageous.
00:30:36
Speaker
people I mean, we're shredding $100 bills at conferences now so people don't have money. So, like... It comes down to, yeah I think, I love the Microsoft strategy. People don't have money. Let's just start streaming stuff on the devices that we have. And I know you don't love that. And maybe you do love it, but you just like you want Xbox as a hardware and so do i But um I mean, first of all, Fable looked fantastic. And they had a scene where they kicked the chicken and everyone's like, I hope they keep the comedy in there. And they showed it. It looked fantastic. They said you they didn't have the person with the Cockney accent saying chicken chaser like and giving you the title. I saw a chicken chaser appear above the head.
00:31:18
Speaker
but i really loved was that or i guess playground games man i mean they were for they were forza right they're just like you know what we're gonna take on another genre and i mean the fable kept us waiting forever and i think i'm not a fable player i will play this because it looks fantastic um But the diehards stuck around, right? They stuck around. And I think the payoff for them was there. And I think the fact that they nailed the trailer, Playground Games clearly put a lot of love and passion into this. I think it's good for everyone in gaming, right? The fact that it's coming out on PlayStation, the fact that it's coming out on Xbox on and on PC, right? Like they're making a good game. And that's just what we need these days. It doesn't matter where it comes out. Just make good games and people will come to your good game.
00:32:03
Speaker
I mean, they make good games. They don't know how to market games, but maybe PlayStation could solve that problem for them now that they are putting their game day one on PlayStation, as opposed to hiding it on Xbox game pass and their own console and hoping for the best. So I, I'll,
00:32:19
Speaker
Partial kidding aside, I i do don't think they're good at marketing their games. I do think like look good. I'll be honest on that. um It's I don't have a data point to share because we won't know till next week. That one was always kind of in the bottom of our tracking for tentative releases this year. So.
00:32:38
Speaker
despite the internet community and gamer journalist class being really excited about Fable because they remember playing Fable from the 2000s. Like you got to also remember that we are 20 years basically removed from anyone giving two hoots about Fable. So this is a nostalgia play to older gamers.
00:32:53
Speaker
um do the young kids care i don't know we'll see right like that's that would be my open question for fable it's a beloved franchise among a very select subset of people who had an xbox 360 or xbox right um fable 1 people too um So we'll see. But the game they did announce that it's just a guaranteed slam dunk is Forza 6. That's like a slam dunk. I don't know if it'll be good, you know but and that that definitely has a very passionate community for car sim, beautiful looking cars. I mean, this is where Xbox can like hang its head on it and we beat Need for Speed. There is no other car game. that our Our competition in beautiful car sim game is literally Grand Theft Auto.
00:33:38
Speaker
let' that the grand charismmo I guess ah again, they won Forza's Forza forsa runs laps around all of them. They are the they are the they are the S tier class of that game. I bought a PlayStation one because Gran Turismo 2 looked so good. and they had the cardigans, I think, in the beginning, like my favorite game.
00:34:02
Speaker
that was a bop i mean that was just like something that gran turismo always did right where those intro videos just got you so in the zone like the music the visuals but i just sucked at real cars driving like the regular for for as a motorsport i can't do but horizon's got more of the arcadey feel um and it's in japan man people are so excited for it to be in japan it's the biggest ever and the cars look beautiful and they've created such a great multiplayer environment in a open world driving game. And it's just so cool. Again, it's playground, man. Playground games is like the gem in Microsoft's portfolio. And maybe you should talk to them about advertising this and talking about how good playground games is.
00:34:47
Speaker
I look, I, Looks gorgeous. I, as an analyst, have no reservations on the upside of that game. The community's there. It's the it's the best in class of what it the genre it sits in. And so it'll likely do insanely well. And then the last game that was in between the sandwich and between those was the Game Freak, the The Nintendo company kind of that's been freed out from making Pokemon forever to kind of show the gaming world like we are creative. like I don't know what the point of this game is other than it's like, hey, we we we're were free to to try something else that is a little bit more mature, a little bit more edgy.
00:35:23
Speaker
We're not making the same Pokemon game, you know, and we'll see how it does. um I'm dubious, but we'll see. See if they know how to optimize a game for a system that has potential to optimize games. There was also a Double Fine game in there. I think Kiln? I don't know. It was like a multiplayer game, which is another kind of random one out there. But Double Fine tends to come out with unique hits for their audience. But I think most people are not thrilled that it was a multiplayer game. Right.
00:35:55
Speaker
And they didn't announce anything with the Master Chief game, Halo 1, on PlayStation, did they? You can't do that. You know, this was... You can't drop Fable, Forza, and Halo all at once. Like, come on, marketing, right? You gotta spread that out. You gotta have something for DICE or GDC that's two months away, right? It's... ah I think the next major beat will be the summer game fest in the summer thing. But understood. But like, I'm wondering, is that coming out this year? I saw rumors on the social platform. So always going to salt that they were going to originally launch this in November. And now they're just waiting to see if GTA blinks because if they released Halo remastered in November, it's dead on arrival. GTA does come out this November. So that's the rumor I saw on the socials. So.
00:36:46
Speaker
Colin, if you follow Colin, his amazing patch notes, went to war with this random person on LinkedIn that's like, GTA 6 is not the most exciting game of 2026. love to watch you from afar. I can just tell the anger you have. Like...
00:37:02
Speaker
Well, I just feel like that's just... I mean, clip, eh? And i I was like, yeah I can't not take the bait on this one. So I'll just say that. And um that person probably... they That person or the bot of the person. Who knows? i Sorry, I'm being mean now.
00:37:15
Speaker
I just think that tags like that are just silly at its face. Like, no, no, GTA is just um the most... hyped game um will sell billions of dollars in 24 hours then nothing will move off like there is nothing that could happen that will change that fate for that game out the gate it's just going to be wildly successful and every game that's even pondering coming out against a game you or right after that game is just screwed like don't do it it's not worth you'll lose um so yeah so when people say like actually it's control like uh well like no or it's resident evil i'm go i'm gonna say the lifetime sales and this is now shot at copcom i think this resident evil record will sell really really well
00:38:00
Speaker
But the lifetime sales of GTA 6, well, quintuple. Anything error that Resident Evil will do. They're going to lose to GTA 6. It's just unknown. And I think people have accepted that other than this one individual.
00:38:14
Speaker
um But let's talk about the real negative news was ah a company near and dear to my childhood and now Ubisoft. uh ubisoft had a really bad couple of days i think it started a lot last week before the layoffs where one of their creative directors the guy who was the creative director of the division left for dice he left to take the role of um don't know why i'm drawing a blank on his name right now the guy that created a battlefield
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah. I'll fix that, right? like he he He left. he he's Rest in peace. But ah this guy moved over from the Division who you know, hated or loved, the Division's good at what it does. like it It made a beat for itself. Following that, Ubisoft announced that they want all their employees back in office five days a week, which people love to hear that. Who doesn't want to be in the office five days a week? And then they announced the canning of six games, one being the long, long, long-awaited Prince of Persia Sands of Time. Sands of Time Remake, yeah. And, like, I guess my first question through all this is, like, I remember, I think I was, like, in middle school or high school when Prince of Persia came out.
00:39:28
Speaker
And it was a huge success. it Does this kill Prince of Persia as a, i like... Yeah, it does for a while, doesn't it? didn't think about that, but you got to think it does. And like, honestly, they're probably being informed by how lackluster all the side-scrolling Prince Persia games they've been releasing have done. And so they're probably making the assumption that these games are not selling well at all. So is this even IP worth saving? Or is this IP that we can recitate right now?
00:39:56
Speaker
That said, like,
00:39:59
Speaker
this model works. Look at Capcom. they They pulled themselves out of the dredges in part because they started remaking Resident Evil games. And they are the for best in class, in my opinion, about remakes. They look back and they're like, you know what? We're making this game and we'll remake this game. And they just keep doing it with Resident Evil and it's working. They sell they sell ah a lot of copies remaking Resident Evil games and you know i i gotta think like other game companies are going to realize that too now maybe less of the square enix side where you take one game and turn it into three probably a tough one they would have sold you know done better if they just tried to make it one but understand that you know maybe don't take a game and turn into a trilogy um but um but that beyond that i think remakes are obvious path and something like prince of persia is like you know
00:40:51
Speaker
an obviously remake much like halo like yeah um your your favorite company microsoft realized that well you know what stop making new games we no one wants to play master chief we've kind of killed the lore let's go back and just put them put them back in halo one give them the shotgun discover the flood but with updated graphics and mechanics microsoft's been making remaking halo one for years now now they're just finally remaking it for playstation as well The Master Chief collection, what could have been probably one of the greatest collections of all time, was the biggest flop of a game release I've ever seen. i remember the day I got it, I took off from work and me and my buddy, we lived in different states at the time, we were going to play all day online and like the online service just didn't work.
00:41:36
Speaker
It started a day and then that day became a week and then that week became a month and matchmaking wasn't working and party play wasn't working. like Either way, I don't want to get off there. The remake stuff is good. The fact that they kept Beyond Good and Evil 2, which has been in development since longer than Duke Nukem, was like, why keep that? I mean, sunk cost fallacy, kill it off, and clearly they still see something there, but you cancel six games, but you keep this one game there, and it's why. And to your remakes, like they own some of the most amazing IPs, and
00:42:09
Speaker
a lot of people want a, a ah splinter cell remake, right? Like they've been asking for the splinter cell remake, but my issue with that is like, that is such a niche player, right? Like you're not going sell a ton of Sam Fisher games because no one wants to really sneak around. That's ah a sub subclass of users, not subclass, like a small set of users. Um, they have so many great IPs. Well, I mean the, they, I know I've heard they're remaking black or a black flag. I think that's been rumored forever. Um,
00:42:37
Speaker
Obviously, remake Assassin's Creed 2 and the trilogy of Ezio with like Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I forget the third one title. i think it's Resurrection or something. It's Search the R. But like the trilogy Ezio games. Like Ezio is the most popular...
00:42:56
Speaker
hero of Assassin's Creed, right? Like, by far, right? Whereas I personally believe that the best game is Black Flag, but the best protagonist is is the Ezio character from AC2. Remake those... Remake them in your RPG format that you seem so set on doing now, where just, like, this massive, sprawling world of a billion, like, you know...
00:43:18
Speaker
different uh things to do they're deep deep games like would i love it no but it just makes financial sense and back to the ubisoft i meant to kind of kick off like yeah it sucks that all those people got cut it sucks that the halifax studio got shut down for reasons financial or union busting who knows but like um they did get shut down and like i think i was probably going to do something on this next week uh a bit um and like i just think like this isn't completely what's happening but it's not i think just, we're going to see more and more companies move away from, from the West, man. Like I'm developing the West. Like I saw Amir's data points and I saw people, Joe was writing about it. Like, can you believe all the the layoffs coming out of California? And I'm like,
00:44:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's expensive. And like, we're in a flat world now in the sense that we all operate on a machine that transfers digital bits from one place to another place. So there's no reason why a knowledge economy worker needs to sit in the the most expensive part of the world to do their job. They could be out of anywhere. Right. And so because the world is flat, that sense, I just think this is going happen more and more where, the gaming industry might grow, but um the, but the, but where they are might shift drastically. So you might have a booming gaming industry in Riyadh.
00:44:36
Speaker
ah That's very likely, right? um Because the government's going subsidize people to live there. So it's going cheaper to make games there. So youre go see this big push of people moving to Riyadh. I saw some news, like people of Europe threatening to move their offices out to Riyadh. If they don't support game development in UK and other parts, I'm like,
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's that's what's going to happen because it's they're very serious in the other parts of the world to make gaming development, gaming professionals live in their markets. So I don't know. I just think this is a continuation of something that's going to go on and on and on and on. Because you know as much as I want to it sucks how these gaming companies are living in California. It's also like, well, it's because the people want to talk about but the world is flat now in the in the knowledge economy.
00:45:15
Speaker
It is, and you're right. But also at the same time, then that return to office five days a week is an interesting choice, right? Meaning that, hey. Well, it's to force people out. That's all they're trying to guess so, yeah. But like, I mean, sorry. Well, you can be anywhere, but you got to be in one of these offices, right? and I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. you know I don't think being in the office a number of days a week is a bad thing. and I'm not. I'm not to complain, but a couple days a week is is not a terrible thing, especially in my mind when you're around people. You collaborate a little better than online.
00:45:46
Speaker
um But I think Ubisoft...
00:45:51
Speaker
I'm not seeing any light there. And I would love to. I think Rainbow Six needs to come back in the best way possible. I think Splinter Cell needs to come back in the best way possible. Assassin's Creed, and it just it seems like... Yeah, the foot and have to parse to how they reorg things. i saw I haven't spent a lot of time on it, but they created like five camps of like IP live here, this IP live here. this is what their focus is now. Yeah.
00:46:14
Speaker
I mean, they got that cash infusion from Tencent. I, you know, as a spin co some stuff off, I hope they figure it out. They sit on beloved IP. um I just hope they're making the right bets over there in terms of where to take things. When I hear they're like we're going to continue trying to push into live services, I just go stop.
00:46:36
Speaker
Fun fact, know how many people Ubisoft employees right now? I guess 30,000. Oh, no, way too high. 17,000. Okay. Extremely high. So again, maybe consolidation is what they are aiming for. i think part of the issue, as much as I love Ubisoft, is that it's still the original owners. And every few years, someone tries to come in and do a corporate takeover of Ubisoft and everyone roots for Ubisoft. Like, you can do this, Ubisoft. We love you. And then Ubisoft survives and then Ubisoft becomes the bad guy. I feel like it's this cycle for Ubisoft. Yeah.
00:47:10
Speaker
Well, they do get critique on the kind of the games they make. I would say that um they're all very same Z. But yeah, you know, it was the dark night saying you, you, you're the hero until you become the villain sort of thing. Right.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah. um day it Yeah. And then i feel like anyone that's doing laughs right now immediately becomes the villain. And this is like, I, you know, land on this and we'll go to happier topics. Like this is where I think AI has become a scapegoat. I think you're sort of hearing a lot of things like or optimize using AI, blah, blah, blah, because they don't really want to say what's actually happening, which is like,
00:47:39
Speaker
Or we're just going to move your jobs to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, like where it's cheaper to pay people to live there. Either you we relocate you there and it's just cheaper in our PNL or you just don't move there and we find someone that is going to move there or is there. Let's talk about Dice.
00:47:58
Speaker
month let's talk about dice yeah um dice i am attending um i think maybe you are too um i'm excited to go did not go last year i plan on going this year um and so yeah i'm uh i'm generally interested to see what this is this is like ce used to go ces a lot of my old life when i was in media so it's in the same location it's like sorry i know I know that hotel bar so well and that whole lounge area for my CES days. So to me, is this like a CES, but smaller and more gamer focused? Then awesome. But I'm excited, man. How about you?
00:48:38
Speaker
I am super excited about that. I think that we have a couple of cool events planned out here that we're excited to to see people. I'm excited to be in Vegas. Aria is a great spot. We rented out a suite, so that we're going to have a great time out there. And I think it's a good event. I think it's going to keep the energy going. And gaming will be interesting just to be there and be a fly on the wall just to hear what people are talking about. It's usually the executives that are hanging out there. And I'm looking forward to that.
00:49:05
Speaker
nice little warm getaway because here again the east coast we're going to get dumped on with snow here so well if anyone made it this far along and they want to like say what's up i'm there so just hit me up dm me um maybe they're doing something um um maybe we do like a ah live version of this for um we could talk how bad high guard did um i got i got plans for you we're going talk about it after this but before we end up end today let's talk let's in proper fashion one last thing Let's talk about high guard.
00:49:37
Speaker
Oh man. I, I got such a hot button issue, man. Apparently, um, high what is sort of high level? So people that don't high guard is the latest attempt to make another hero shooter. Um, no one knew it existed really until it was the last game at the game awards where it became a viral meme to basically say, this is trash. Like, why is this even here? This is, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right. Um, and then,
00:50:01
Speaker
Fast forward. And it sucks for the people there because ah the story being is that Jeff Keighley played the game, loved the game and just offered them the slot at the end because no one was necessarily buying it. So that's basically what happened. They got the free promotion, quote unquote. um It's set to come out this week, I guess.
00:50:17
Speaker
um And it's dead on arrival, but I can deal with it, which is why we don't write about it. Talk about it. It's not much to say. And then just like, well, I saw a piece from like, I think it was IGN. They're like, are we trashing a game before it's even out? Is that fair? And my POV is like, who cares? no one's playing this game. This is like journalistic, like journal class, like kind of focusing on something that the gaming in public writ large does not care about. Like I'd rather see someone write about gurney to free fire continue. It's like never ending run and being a massive game to rest the world. Then we know that piece about high guard, which it's like, but whatever.
00:50:54
Speaker
<unk> That's a funny part of the IGN thing right because I remember when the Arkham Knights was coming out and IGN and everyone was shitting on Arkham Knights before it came out so all of a sudden now we're the good guy on the other side like oh why are we doing this it's the pot calling the kettle black um But you know the more I read about it, and I know people always say, I'll tell you about the people from these studios, right? It's technically a Titanfall successor. And people have been asking for that for the longest time. And they added a couple mechanics to it, which might make it interesting. I'm not disagreeing with you. you know It's kind of got the shit end of a stick going for it. But the thing is, maybe it's the type of hype that like you know what might be have people being like, I'm going to try this.
00:51:35
Speaker
Well, so that's my that's my POV on it. It's that there's no actual measurable attention on this game. And so all the hype and all the conversation is very much the gaming industry talking about a thing, not the normies out there. They don't know this thing exists, and that's why it's going to die. yet Nothing to do with quality. I think bad games can sell all the time. It's all about getting attention.
00:51:54
Speaker
And if you get attention, people will play buy your game or spend money on it, and they have no attention. And the market they're going into, which is why is this game being made I think it's a fair point it's like you're going in a market that's owned by overwatch rivals and apex are you going to dethrone those three things unless you have a war chest of money to pull the attention away the answer is probably no right and so that's where I think games like this are hard because you're basically inviting the hero shooter community the switching costs like oh switch from this to this um it's not going to happen but that's why also in my more more bullish on marathon people hated on that game
00:52:31
Speaker
People, and we should talk about this next week because I'll have data. I'm more bull than bear on this game, but there's not, there's not an old gobbledy of major games. There's, you know Tarkov, which is grimy and core. Then you have obviously our creators, huge success. There is room for a third game at minimum, right? Like there is room on that pedestal for the bronze medalist at the floor to kind of take it. And I think Bungie has the opportunity to be the bronze medalist or better, you know, who knows, but like, you're not, you're,
00:52:58
Speaker
ARC proved to market marathon, if it's good. And if the play test goes well, can kind of calcify that market is, yeah, we have our, you know, extraction shooters. Here you go. You know, and first, I'm going transition to like you said, to Marathon. I'm so excited about Marathon. I was about to buy Art Graders and I read Marathon's coming in March 6th with an open beta the week before. and that's like, this is what Battlefield did, right? And this is what worked for Battlefield. And I think Bungie learned, Bungie heard, Bungie listened to the feedback that they got. The artwork thing was resolved. Everything was resolved. Like, I think they got their ducks in a row and I think they're going to get something with Marathon. And I'm super excited to be able to play it.
00:53:39
Speaker
Me too. I i i like Bungie. I'm a Destiny guy and OG Halo. um And if it doesn't work out for Microsoft and gaming, one of the greatest twists in history would be that Sony somehow buys that IP and hands it back to Bungie and say, do you want to make it another Halo? That would be that would be ah ah would be an amazing world. to up But you know maybe alt-reality, wishful thinking. But i I'm excited for Marathon. I hope it goes well. It looks like it's tracking to do. I mean, it has a lot upsides.
00:54:08
Speaker
we need to see if people play the game for me to have a real strong point of view, but I think the vibes are there. And I think, um, people like a comeback story like Hytale. And so people want this to succeed. And if the play test goes well, I think it will succeed.
00:54:23
Speaker
It'll find an audience. So before we wrap today, Colin, is there anything you want to share? What you're, what you're working on, what you're doing? Um, no, I am, uh, just, uh, you know, uh, Kyle needs, um,
00:54:35
Speaker
You know, doing o Screen Engine ASI and my game data, I post patch notes on Friday mornings usually. um I'm on all the places, both Substack, Player Driven's website, and ah and LinkedIn where the majority of my followers are. And now I am ah just kind of getting ready for the the beginning of conference season, man. Dice kicks it off. We end up at GDC the month after that. You're just kind of in a snowball. There's an awesome conference in Austin called the Live Service Gaming Summit.
00:55:04
Speaker
They do a good job. They do it out of London. They did one in Austin last year. it was good. They're doing it again this year. So shout out to that one. If anyone knows about it, I actually think it's a really good event. it's really interesting.
00:55:16
Speaker
Yeah, we had a few people go to LiveOps last year in Austin, and they loved it. It was a great event. I am Greg Posner. At PlayerDriven, next week, we're having our first PlayerDriven workshop, which is sponsored by a company called AppFollow, where we're going talking about player experience. We got some of the top player experience. People have come share their tips and tools on how you can do better at the job, how you can get those strategies to do better. And I'm super excited to be sharing some of this stuff in there. And if they're... Yeah, yeah.
00:55:44
Speaker
Check it out, playerdriven.io. and And if you have ideas of if we do something at DICE, shoot them to Greg. like What do you want us to talk about if we do something? um i you know Do you want us to continue to fight about Xbox? Or are we kind of stale on that topic? Do you want us to talk about Nintendo? Probably not. like Just give them all to Greg. Hit them up on all the social platforms and tell him what you want us to talk about. Oh, and this Discord server too.
00:56:06
Speaker
kind the discord Come check out the Discord. You can scan it right at the top of this stream. If not, we will be back next week with some more gaming stuff.