Transcript
Andrew Wilmot: Good morning. Good day. Good evening Whenever you are, welcome to the Dopamine Slot Machine. The podcast that discusses what you need to know about the video games your children are playing. How are they designed to get your kids hooked? How do they make money from your children? and what can you do to make sure that your child's relationship with video games is a positive one?
Andrew Wilmot: My name is Andrew. I'm a dad of two. and a lifelong gamer. So a couple of years ago, February 2024, Disney paid one and a half billion dollars for staking Epic Games, the developers behind Fortnite.
Andrew Wilmot: At the time this was a press release and a piece of concept art. But we are now starting to see what the... what they're making of this. What does that actually mean?
Andrew Wilmot: so Last week a preview of Fortnite's new launcher did the rounds with the Disney tile set right next to the Battle Royale one. so What has Disney actually bought? What sort of games are going to come out of this?
Andrew Wilmot: and what can you do about it. a little bit of honesty before we start i loved star wars games growing up Uh, The Tie Fighter and X -Wing games are some of the first games I played. I had Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2 on the PlayStation.
Andrew Wilmot: I'm really biased in towards liking Star Wars games. I want to like them. I want it to be, you know, it's not the IP that I'm most into, but, you know, I want Star Wars games to succeed.
Andrew Wilmot: so Keep that in mind when I say what really worries me is what... We're going to be looking at one game called a Star Wars Droid Tycoon. And what really worries me is about...
Andrew Wilmot: the way it's built and what that does. to A nine -year -old, what that does to kids. so firstly Let's put the deal in plain terms. Disney bought a minority stake in Epic.
Andrew Wilmot: And with it, a promise. A new persistent universe that plugs into Fortnite where you can play, watch and shop. across Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and Avatar I didn't add the word shop here, by the way. That is from the original announcement.
Andrew Wilmot: Until this year, that partnership looked... like the crossovers Fortnite's always done. A Star Wars themed season here, a Marvel skin there. but it's shifted gears. Last November, Disneyland Game Rush went live, which is a fortnight island built to look like the entrance to Disneyland, with seven minigames based on rides like Space Mountain and the Haunted Mansion.
Andrew Wilmot: In May, Lucasfilm gave Fortnite's creators an official Star Wars toolkit. the film's characters and vehicles ready used to drop into games built with fortnight's own editor Epic said that hundreds of Star Wars islands would go live from the 1st May, and it launched three of its own to show what the toolkit could do.
Andrew Wilmot: Greetings. Joy to Tycoon. On the 19th of May, a watch party island on Navarro, which is a planet in the Star Wars universe, showed a 10 -minute sneak peek of the Mandalorian and Grogu.
Andrew Wilmot: three days before it reached cinemas. with a Jon Favreau Q and &A on the same island the week before. If you link an Epic account to a My Disney account before the end of October, there's a free backpack cosmetic in it for you.
Andrew Wilmot: It's already here you're saying this vertical integration of Disney into Star Wars. Right. In August, things changed. Disney built its own Fortnite island, Smuggler's Gambit, and wired it into the queue for the Millennium Falcon ride at Disneyland and at Hollywood Studios in Florida.
Andrew Wilmot: So you stand in the queue, you accept a mission and if you complete it there's an outfit waiting in the game when you get home. The story starts in a theme park. carries on in the bedroom. The full Disney universe is now expected in 2027 alongside the next version of Unreal Engine and Epyx Boss has promised a big launch before the end of this year.
Andrew Wilmot: Putting that in a row. You watch the films. Play the island. visit the park Link the account. and buy the outfit. each one pointing at the next. the same company owning them all.
Andrew Wilmot: Fortnite is becoming Disney's shop window.
Andrew Wilmot: This is interesting when you contrast how Epic's been doing more broadly. So in March this year, Epic laid off over a thousand people. It cut half a billion dollars in costs. Tim Sweeney, who runs Epic, wrote to his staff that Fortnite engagement had been falling since 2025.
Andrew Wilmot: that the company was spending significantly more than it was making. Now he didn't cite this podcast as a reason for that decline, but I do like to imagine I can take some credit. But among the reasons he did give...
Andrew Wilmot: is that games are now competing for time with other kinds of entertainment that keeps getting better at holding attention Notice what he said there. Better at holding attention. Didn't say more entertaining. better at holding attention it's that as an engagement mechanism over actually delivering something of value to its audience In the same memo he promised huge launch plans for the end of the year, although he didn't specifically say Disney.
Andrew Wilmot: I'm... to put this really cleanly. When a company says it has to win engagement back, it means hours. And the hours it wants are your child's. the Disney Universe's epic's plan to get those hours back.
Andrew Wilmot: The second thing to understand is that Fortnite is no longer one game. It never really was either. Right, it was just that Fortnite Battle Royale was the dominant game mode. And.
Andrew Wilmot: Epic no longer really wants to be just a games company. His own description of the plan is that it's becoming a tools provider, more like an app store than a studio. More like Roblox. Nearly half of all time spent in Fortnite now is spent on islands made by outside creators, and Epic pays those creators for my pool.
Andrew Wilmot: 40 % of the net money it takes in the item shop each month. and it splits by engagement. The Formula rewards active playtime above all. waited by whether players come back on day one and on day seven.
Andrew Wilmot: with a further nudge for playtime that happens near V -Bucks spending. So bring a new player to Fortnite and you get an extra cut of what they contribute for six months. Since 2023, that pool has paid creators more than a billion dollars.
Andrew Wilmot: A creative building of Fortnight Island is paid by the minute. that children are spending. in that game and they paid more for the child who comes back to tomorrow and the week after.
Andrew Wilmot: Nothing in the formula pays for a game being finished. Off -road start with the controller down happy. The maths of Creator Islands is the mass of a treadmill. And since the 9th of January this year, creators can sell things inside the island for V -Bucks, so doubling down on their own income.
Andrew Wilmot: Boosts, bundles, paid areas, and in Epic's own wording, random rewards. The very loot boxes that were previously removed from Fortnite after a settlement with the FTC. Until the end of January 2027, the creator keeps every penny of the V -Box value.
Andrew Wilmot: Sales are final. Epic's help page says players can't cancel them or use return tickets. and anything bought on an island only works on that island. If your arms closes... The purchases go with it.
Andrew Wilmot: This was already bad enough, right, with players... potentially being able to accidentally spend huge amounts of money in fortnight and there was a whole settlement in the us about this that it had engaged in manipulative mechanics to trick players particularly young players children into spending huge amounts of money And now.
Andrew Wilmot: not ah But at least if you spent money there, you you had an item which would last for the duration of the game. Now it's tied to a specific island. So a specific game created by an independent developer. And if they shut that game down, you lose all the items. You don't get a refund.
Andrew Wilmot: In any sort of way. And if your child, you know, you accidentally link a payment card to the device or you you you buy V -Bucks once and your child watches you and this happens. right You can find this in the news regularly.
Andrew Wilmot: Alright. your child then goes on to keep spending on that card you've linked and the first thing you realize the first time you notice is when you get a ah card declined. notification
Andrew Wilmot: Right? This is their model. This is how it works. So you have a company that needs engagement back. A creative economy that is paid by the minute. That's it. kids start spending in In game.
Andrew Wilmot: and a shop open inside every single one of these games. And that's the machine that Disney's characters are being poured into. So let's take a look at one game. in particular star wars droid tycoon which is perhaps the most successful game that's come out of this so far Went live on the 1st of May as one of...
Andrew Wilmot: three showcase games made by a studio called Phode with Blazin Studios. in collaboration with Epic and Lucasfilm. Epic previewed it at an event in Los Angeles. A Disney executive gave the quote you'd expect about Star Wars being one of the biggest franchises in entertainment.
Andrew Wilmot: And Lucasfilm's head of franchise story said, joins Who doesn't want to build droids? He's right, and that's kind of the point. By June it was pulling in tens of thousands of players at a time. It had become one of the most played modes in the whole of fortnight On the 26th of June... and In a note added to its own announcement, Epic said it was transferring the publishing rights to Fode.
Andrew Wilmot: It is now an independently run game. wearing Disney's costume. And here's how it plays. You run a droid workshop in Tatooine. Blueprints were all passed on a conveyor. at the Jawa Sand Cooler and you buy the ones you can afford.
Andrew Wilmot: you build the joy little workstation and you set it to work earning credits credits by more blueprints and upgrades. That's what. a bit over 40 droids at launch and now there's more with r2 units bb units gonk droids pit droids superficially looks very charming.
Andrew Wilmot: and it's exactly the sort of thing that my Nine -year -old. potter around in but then you look at the loop underneath So you've got something called Rebirth. Once your workshop reaches a certain size, the game invites you to hand back every single credit you own,
Andrew Wilmot: including any you have above the requirement in exchange for permanent boosts and more slots in your base, and upgrade to your whole workshop. and you start again but a bit faster the 35 rebirth levels.
Andrew Wilmot: The first costs 10 ,000 credits The 35th cost 778 trillion credits. When you've done all 35, the game moves into a second cycle of 35. and there are five cycles that loop background to the start.
Andrew Wilmot: From level 12 you can choose a Super Rebirth and instead, which wipes your brace and every Droid and Credit in it for a bigger permanent multiplier. There's no end. That's not me being dramatic. One of the fan -built trackers describes this progression in its own words as an endless loop.
Andrew Wilmot: When I was a kid... You finished the Star Wars game and the credits rolled. This one is built so that they never do. The second piece is The Ladder of Rarity. Every droid comes in tares.
Andrew Wilmot: to vote. Then gold at four times the income. Diamond at eight. Rainbow at 16. In June, a tape called Beskara arrived. and galactic in July, and so by the middle of August,
Andrew Wilmot: We've got Stella. and each new tear moves the ceiling up, so the collection your child has spent June completing is by September the bottom rung. And then it's got the more literal slot machine.
Andrew Wilmot: When you craft a droid, there's a small chance it comes out flawless. which unlocks a permanent effect. There are crates you open for upgrade chips with a chance of the premium currency. Nova Crystals and Apache in July raise that chance.
Andrew Wilmot: There's a lucky pit droid you can put on a cooldown. and The game now shows you a countdown until you can play it again. In late August, they added fusion. Put three droids into a machine and get one you can't get any other way. with the catch that the result is only as good as the worst droid you put in.
Andrew Wilmot: The guides warn you not to burn your rare ones accidentally. That's a loot box with extra steps but putting your child's own collection. at stake. um And then there's the scheduling. There's daily quests. One asks players to build or sell 40 joints in a day.
Andrew Wilmot: In July it was cut to 20, which tells you. how that first number landed. Astromech missions run on timers. Live events run for two days at a time, and if you miss them, that's it. It's gone. The stellar event was the 15th and 16th of August, with double credits and double odds on the rare blueprints.
Andrew Wilmot: plus a bass skin you can't get afterwards. So. 15th and 16th of August, right slap bang in the middle of the summer holidays. If you had plans those days, but your kid was obsessed with ah obsessed with this game, is so obsessed with JoyBuilder.
Andrew Wilmot: uh then they're going to miss out and they're probably going to be pretty upset about it and that's not your fault at all it's the game that's engineered that. One player on the developers forum wrote that they hadn't missed a single live event since they started and they still couldn't get the skin from the one before.
Andrew Wilmot: Your base earns credits whilst you're offline. more so from rebirth number 25 which sounds generous until you understand that it means there's always something waiting to be collected. There is always a reason. for quick login just i'll just pop in and collect it all Then there's the shop.
Andrew Wilmot: Over the summer they added a cantina shop that takes three bucks. There's a VIP pack, starter pack, companion pack, luck boost and boost bundle. Event passes are 300 V -Bucks and they double your event points.
Andrew Wilmot: So the game's selling luck. You can boost your luck. and it's selling that to children You pay for this temporary upgrade. to get an advantage for a short space of time but it costs real money.
Andrew Wilmot: Now, yes. Everything in the shop. can be earned with Nova Crystals by playing normally. That's true. But that's kind of the whole design. It's designed to be... uh painful in such a way that.
Andrew Wilmot: paying always looks reasonable as a way to avoid that pain. There are now third -party websites that track your droid collection and plan your rebirths for you. Spreadsheets for a game about building R2 -D2. And the children's game needs a spreadsheet.
Andrew Wilmot: I think there's a bit too much bookkeeping going on. And all of this. sounds extremely familiar because This isn't an original game. Droid Tycoon is not an original game. Swap the sound cooler for conveyor belt. The droids were Italian brain rot characters and you have Stealer Brain Rot on Roblox right now.
Andrew Wilmot: The mechanics are the same. But what Disney's license adds is trust. You see the Star Wars logo and you think of Lego sets on Saturday afternoons. You don't think Roblox. You don't think steal a brainwatch. You don't see the loop underneath.
Andrew Wilmot: That is what the license is for. It's laundering Disney's trust. to build addictive products. And there are hundreds of Star Wars islands built with the same toolkit. each monetized.
Andrew Wilmot: with the same formula now to Move away from styles for just a second. I'm not going to dive deep into it, but it was just announced Yesterday and I was just shocked by the callousness of this
Andrew Wilmot: If, like me, you went to see Toy Story 5 at the cinema you might have come away with some mixed feelings about it. uh the fundamental message being about getting kids off of screens but then sort of finishing and you know if you've not seen this then skip ahead 30 seconds but finishing with a perspective that perhaps there is a moderated place for screens.
Andrew Wilmot: It wasn't the smartphone free childhood movie that ah a few people were saying it was, and it wasn't the... um sell out to big tech that I saw a few other people. calling it it was Pretty decent film.
Andrew Wilmot: with a message that I've landed pretty well I think. Yesterday. September 23rd. fortnight added a toy story 5 experience to coincide with toy story 5's disney plus release part of the It's this vertical integration into marketing It's a...
Andrew Wilmot: Now this... It's not really a game itself, is it sort of runs on a hub -and -spoke event. it's It's a two week limited time activation. running till early October.
Andrew Wilmot: And it works like this. You start in Bonnie's Imagination, which is a persistent home base. toy height. where furniture becomes terrain and hidden imaginary spaces open into other worlds.
Andrew Wilmot: and a rift scatters six toys across other creator islands. You pick a toy, follow its route out of the hub into a partner island. where each rescue is a different task. Completing a mission and we're returning the toy to Bonnie's room lets you enter a code that unlocks a new traversal ability and over the six rescues you collect a jetpack, imagination transport ability,
Andrew Wilmot: etc, etc. those abilities at the gate. The hub hides a castle, an ancient temple, a spaceship, each unlocked as you finish missions and gain abilities. So what this is, it's traffic routing. It's sending children into other third -party islands to maximise time spent there.
Andrew Wilmot: so Toy Story 5's whole... message about keeping kids off You know having a balance to childhood has been weaponized.
Andrew Wilmot: to engage kids further into screens. And the problem isn't... Just. droid taiko, and it isn't this Toy Story 5. activation it's um It's what this means as a longer -term strategy.
Andrew Wilmot: As I said, it is laundering the trust that you might have in Disney. as an IP. to sell products that are addictive by design it's not even selling the product your your child and your child's time is the product there it's it's acquiring your child's engagement that is the explicit goal given by Epic Games.
Andrew Wilmot: So... Here are some practical things you can do. and practical item number zero which i'll say every time is just don't let your kids play fortnite there are better games out there But in the interest of giving some practical advice for those of you who have done that and...
Andrew Wilmot: you've had those conversations with your child firstly Find out what Fort Munchie Tower is actually playing. You've heard of Battle Royale, we've covered that. But there's more than just Battle Royale now. as thousands of creator islands it's more like roblox in this sense than uh Fortnite as you imagine it.
Andrew Wilmot: Find out what they've been playing. Whether it's... Droid tycoon or another game There are other tycoon -style games. As I mentioned, Droid Tycoon is a... effectively a rip -off of Stealer Brainwot.
Andrew Wilmot: You can't the first place to begin is understandable Just know the games your child is actually playing. Then set the Epic Parental Controls on the account itself, not just on the console. so these live in the ah epic account portal behind six digit pin You can switch on purchase confirmation so nothing is bought through Epic without your pin. Make sure your child doesn't know that pin.
Andrew Wilmot: But note that doesn't cover the PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo stores, which all need their own controls. I really dislike the parental controls argument that you can just block everything down for this sort of reason. There's so many steps and it's so easy to make a mistake. But if you are going to give your child these games, then...
Andrew Wilmot: you should be doing it. There's a content limit that blocks islands above a rating you choose, but keep in mind those ratings are pretty much set by the creators of these irons themselves, so don't rely on that too much.
Andrew Wilmot: Um, You can set to cover purchases of randomized items, which is... domain gambling feature. If your child is under 13, the count should already be... an account which blocks chat and real money purchases until you consent.
Andrew Wilmot: And then... you know, any sort of money they are spending. treat differently if it's in an island versus in the item shop. As said, a skin from the item shop follows your child all around Fortnite, but a luck boost in Joy Tycoon lives on that island, can't be refunded,
Andrew Wilmot: And... it I've seen complaints that it doesn't even survive a rebirth. If you give VBox a tool... then have it limited. potentially use gift cards as opposed to a payment card being linked to it.
Andrew Wilmot: And before they spend anything, asking them, what does this pit? payment due where does it work is it fortnight as a whole or is it specifically with an island Ask that question before any of it's spent.
Andrew Wilmot: I finally... Just... Spot the treadmill. listen for the i just need another billion credits i'm only logging in to collect Rebirth is built to produce the first and offline earnings. The second.
Andrew Wilmot: Right it's They're trying to get you to... Uh... login to collect those credits to keep doing that and then funnel you into um Ping.
Andrew Wilmot: for real. items. The two day events add the I have to be on this weekend, and when you hear that... you're hearing the design you're not you're not hearing any fault with your child you're hearing what the game was engineered to get them to say.
Andrew Wilmot: And then... As well as knowing by name what games are playing, go and sit with them. Ask them to show you the sound call and explain what Rebirth does. asked them what they would lose if they didn't play for a week.
Andrew Wilmot: If they love Star Wars, they'll have Star Wars games with an ending. Lego Star Wars is Amazing. both the classic and modern Battlefront games as well. Huh? and these are games that are a little bit more time -bounded. Now, the modern Battlefront games, some caveats there because there are shops, but the classic Battlefront games are brilliant if they do want a sort of round -based multiplayer type game.
Andrew Wilmot: I would still advise against that for younger children but... I think it's worth mentioning. I think. you know, the the best thing you can do. with a game like Joy joy Tycoon is...
Andrew Wilmot: Choose a finishable game instead. But here's what I'll leave you with. Disney and Epic keep describing this as a universe you can play in, watch and shop across. And that's better than them pretending it's not.
Andrew Wilmot: But the universe is never finished. keeps earning whilst you're away is a really strange thing to hand to a child. whoever the characters are in it. The Star Wars story that you or your child fell in love with had an ending, but the one being built for them now is designed never to end, and to keep getting as much money as possible from you.
Andrew Wilmot: But for now, don't forget, if you've got any questions for us, then you can get in touch with us on the website, thedopamines .machine .co .uk, and all links can be found in our artist profile. I love hearing from you. I love getting questions. it it really makes this all worthwhile.
Andrew Wilmot: That's all we have time for today. Thank you so much for joining me. We'd love to have you here with us again in the next episode. This has been the dopamine slot machine. Thank you. and see you soon.
