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Community Care and Feeding with Ben Kvalo, Anna Wright, and Carols Figueiredo
69 Plays7 months ago
In this engaging episode of the Player: Engage podcast, we delve deep into the world of community in gaming from multiple perspectives. Our host, Greg, is joined by three distinguished guests from the gaming industry: Ben Kvalo from Midwest Games, Anna Wright from Niantic, and Carlos Figueiredo from Minecraft. Each guest shares their unique insights on building and nurturing gaming communities, emphasizing player safety, community engagement, and the integration of community feedback into game development.
Key takeaways from this episode include:
- Ben Kvalo's insights on the business end of gaming and the importance of market strategies for game launches.
- Anna Wright's experiences at Niantic, discussing the impact of real-world interactions in games like Pokémon Go and how these shape community dynamics.
- Carlos Figueiredo's perspective on player safety as a design discipline, highlighting the evolution of community safety features in games like Minecraft.
For a deeper understanding of how these industry leaders are shaping the future of gaming communities and ensuring safe, engaging environments for players, tune into this episode of Player: Engage. Their stories and strategies are not just informative but also a testament to the dynamic and ever-evolving world of gaming. Listen now to explore the intricate balance between player engagement and safety and discover how top companies are leveraging community feedback to enhance gaming experiences.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Player Engage podcast. We've got a really special episode for you today. I'm really excited. Today's episode is actually brought to you by Community Clubhouse. It's a continuation of the insights and connections fostered at the Community Clubhouse at GDC this year. As a premier gathering spot, Community Clubhouse is a free, dynamic hub dedicated to the gaming community and player experience professionals.
00:00:27
Speaker
It hosts enriching in-person events worldwide, featuring expert panels, AMAs, and invaluable networking opportunities. Additionally, it extends its reach online through their vibrant Discord Community Forum, providing continuous learning and networking resources.
AI in Community Safety
00:00:43
Speaker
Today's episode is also brought to you by Community Sift. Picture a vibrant digital community marred by toxic content like hate, speech, and harassment. Certainly not the ideal situation. That's where Community Sift steps in. This AI-powered platform is more than a solution. It's your digital sentinel, swiftly classifying, filtering, and escalating content in real time. With Community Sift, you ensure a safe and conducive online environment while enjoying features like unnatural language processing,
00:01:10
Speaker
image and video moderation, and custom policy guidelines. It's not just moderation, it's empowerment.
Gaming Community Perspectives
00:01:16
Speaker
But today we're focusing on community in gaming. We'll explore this concept from several different perspectives. Firstly, a studio's viewpoint. We'll discuss the commitment to ensuring player safety and fostering a secure online environment. Secondly, we'll talk to a publisher's perspective, focusing on the strategies to assist studios in building a robust online presence and expand their reach to attract more players.
00:01:38
Speaker
Finally, for franchises with established IPs and dedicated fan bases, we'll delve into maintaining the integrity of the IP while continuing to ensure a safe and compliant community experience. Together, these approaches are underlying a holistic commitment to nurturing vibrant and secure gaming communities.
00:01:56
Speaker
With all that being said, we had three awesome guests today. I'm going to let them each introduce themselves one at a time. But as we do it, just to keep moving things along, these are all panelists from our GDC Community Clubhouse event. And what I'd love to ask you as you're introducing yourself are, were there any pivotal insights or lessons that you took away from the Community Clubhouse experience?
Marketing and Player Experience Challenges
00:02:16
Speaker
And is there anything that you'd like to expand upon and talk more to? So with that being said, I'll start with the first box I see, which is Ben Cavallo from Midwest Games.
00:02:26
Speaker
Ben, thanks for joining us. Would you like to say hi? Hey, Greg. Appreciate you having me on. I'm Ben Hualo. I'm the founder CEO of Midwest Games. I was most recently at Netflix before I created this company.
00:02:41
Speaker
Blizzard and 2K. And as far as areas that I was really interested in and want to expand upon, there's just a lack of information around how you go about the business end of games.
00:03:04
Speaker
that put out games, but there's a lack of information and resources for how you ultimately maximize that. And the reality is that the market, with over 14,000 games coming out on Steam alone, and then you look at the mobile market, you look at consoles, you look at everything else going on. There's so many games out there. How you go to market, how you really maximize your opportunity
00:03:33
Speaker
when you launch a title is so important. And I hope that we get more resources out there for how people go to market and making sure that they have the realities in place and not just looking at the top 1% that do succeed. Yeah, I love it. Thank you for that. It's getting to the market and maximizing your efforts. So I appreciate that, Beno, and welcome. Next, I want to introduce Anna Wright from Niantic. Anna, thank you for joining us.
00:04:01
Speaker
I am delighted to be here, Greg. Thank you so much. And it's a delight to be with my co-panelists here. I am Anna Wright. I'm the director of player experience here at Niantic. We make games like Pokemon Go. We make mobile games that connect people to the real world, Monster Hunter Now. And my experience at GDC this year was
00:04:25
Speaker
pretty starkly that there were a lot of people really hungry for the kind of topics that Community Clubhouse was presenting. Whether we're talking about community, whether we're talking about player experience and support, whether we're talking about trust and safety, each of these functions, each of these areas have just so much complexity. There's so much depth.
00:04:47
Speaker
And we were trying to squeeze so much into one panel. I had a talk on player experience and we're trying to talk about everything from your player support journey, the feedback loops that you have, the type of tooling infrastructure and tech stack that you need to be effective, the kind of programs you can develop.
00:05:06
Speaker
I'm a bit of a geek for this topic. So I'll say, I think that that alone could be its own conference. So my sort of takeaway from GDC was more, let's do more. I think people are hungry for it. And I do think that there's a sense in gaming now that there's a sort of bigger opportunity for these functions to have meaningful contributions to the top line KPIs that a game would be pursuing. So that's my takeaway, more of us.
00:05:35
Speaker
I love it. Thank you, Anna. And finally, we have Carlos Figueiredo. Figueiredo. I'm struggling before that beforehand, but I'm getting a thumbs up, so that's perfect. Carlos is from Minecraft, and we really appreciate you coming out today. Carlos, anything you'd like to share?
00:05:49
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me. Great to be here with an excellent group. My name is Carlos Figueiredo and I'm director of player safety for Minecraft. I've been there for over two years now, but prior to that, my career started over almost 16 years ago at Club Penguin. If you will now remember the defunct Club Penguin. That's where I cut my teeth in player safety. After that, I worked for
00:06:15
Speaker
For Two Hat, I worked for that company from very early inception when it was a startup all the way up to the Microsoft acquisition. So you were talking about the episode being brought by Community Sift. I've worked on Community Sift for many, many years.
00:06:29
Speaker
And, um, it was, it's a pleasure to, to be here in the conversation. So for me during the community clubhouse conversations, and also would say even overarching and overall in the GDC experience, something that spoke to me was the fact that the safety conversation was so much more prominent at GDC this time. And it's a stark contracts for me because I, the last time I attended GDC in person was in 2019.
00:06:59
Speaker
And I saw the difference very, it was very much on your face, right? Lots of conversations about safety in different summits, different sessions, lots of focus on this, but not just that. More importantly, I would say is player safety is now becoming truly a design discipline. And I talked about this in my talk there, and I really think that
00:07:26
Speaker
This is becoming a reality where people are saying safety is not just that unwanted thing that you need to do, you know, like blocking the F word. No, it's a part of a holistic strategy. If you truly want to have a very healthy, thriving experience for your players online, that was a strong takeaway there. And the other part was AI. Just, I mean, where isn't AI?
00:07:55
Speaker
you know, a part of the conversation right now, but I particularly enjoy the conversations during a community clubhouse. When we were talking about AI in the context of it brings challenges when it comes to user generated content at scale, but it also is an important tool to help us moderate, to help us incentivize and reinforce our community norms and pro-social behaviors as well.
00:08:25
Speaker
Thank you, Carlos. You're probably the sixth or seventh trust and safety person I met. You all seem to have gotten started at Club Penguin and it's very suspicious that so many people got their start at Club Penguin. But I love that you mentioned that because I think this is a good start to the episode that safety was much more prominent.
Live Ops and Community Growth
00:08:42
Speaker
at this. And I think that makes a lot of sense for multiple reasons. And I think we see a lot more people taking to online to have more discussions to broaden their group. But I'm curious if you think that anything has to do with kind of the trend of games, it seems like 2023 and 2024 live ops is being pushed a lot on a lot of different people who are playing these games. And, you know, in order to have live ops, you need to have community of people coming on and trust and safety needs to. So I'm curious from your perspective, do you think the rise of live ops is helping the rising community or the two separate parts of community that are helping build that pillar?
00:09:13
Speaker
And maybe Carlos, since you had that thought, I'll throw it to you first. All right. I have to take us a little bit back to pre pandemic years. I believe at that point, the recognition, the importance of player safety was already becoming highlighted.
00:09:34
Speaker
at that point, let's say 2019, right? There was already stronger conversations around this, including upcoming, at that time, it was upcoming safety bills around the world, legislation, right? Like there was a lot of talk around that. The gaming industry seemed more primed to have that conversation overall.
00:09:54
Speaker
and starting to understand the connection between a healthy community and things like engagement and retention, longevity of a brand, brand reputation. Those things were already happening. But now, of course, during pandemic years, just the importance of games as means of connection.
00:10:14
Speaker
people really feeling like they belong to a community, to something larger than themselves. And having that sense of community of belongings just became so, so intense, right? I would love to hear.
00:10:25
Speaker
from my colleagues, if they agree to that statement, that now it's just a no brainer that if you want to have a really amazing online experience, having social dynamics and social interactions, the possibility of truly building relationships online is paramount to the success of so many of those games. So I believe it has something to do with what you mentioned in terms of live ops, right? And operationalizing those elements.
00:10:55
Speaker
Anna, I have a question that kind of builds on that, and if you want to add anything. But you know, I remember, and I forgot how many years ago, is when Pokemon Go first launched, but it started this whole wave of getting outside. And I think that A is a great thing, right? People are always associated gamers with sitting behind the couch, sitting behind their screen playing. And all of a sudden, you see groups of people walking throughout the streets having fun capturing Pokemon. Building this type of community is a little different, because there's actually physically people going outside, people going to do different things. And I remember reading stories of people showing up in
00:11:25
Speaker
in graveyard tonight, which were fun things to do, but this all comes up. How do you take a look at community and may not directly sit under your role, but how do you take a look at that greater whole and make sure that your community is safe?
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, obviously it's a really important question when you're playing a game that has geolocation based foundations. You know, I think with Pokemon specifically, it was such a special IP. It is still such a special IP. People are so deeply connected to it. And so I think what we benefited from were sort of pre-existing communities of people who shared this interest, whether it was through the trading cards or through the movies or whatever it might be.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I think for us, what we learned was
00:12:11
Speaker
you know, when we're thinking about how you develop a community and you'll hear people talk a lot about, well, you want to go where your audience is. And when your audience is out in the real world and that's a part of your actual mission, that poses a really interesting sort of conundrum from an online community building perspective. But what we found was that really focusing on those micro communities of players helped us find and identify, you know, who were the real sort of
00:12:37
Speaker
connecting points within those micro communities and how can we tease out relationships there to help us have a better sort of presence within those communities. And I think through that we really got a pretty close up look at some of the challenges and
00:12:54
Speaker
you know, maybe scenarios that players might be involved in that could be deemed unsafe. And so this gets into things like, are they walking in a trespassing area or are they connecting with individuals who, you know, where things can get pretty heated if you're fighting over a gym or things like that. So I think from the very, very early days, our consideration of safety had to be sort of an integrated consideration of both online and real world
00:13:20
Speaker
potential harm. And I come from a social background. I was at Twitter for about eight years. And for us, we talked a lot about when online harm can lead to physical real world harm. It's such an integrated experience when you're playing one of our games that you will be interacting with other players out in the real world. And so I think for us, the focus is obviously on making sure we have reactive frameworks in place to be responsive. But I think more and more
00:13:49
Speaker
how do we, and this kind of gets to, I think, what Carlos is talking about, how do we think about this from the moment of design? How do we integrate the idea of more pro-social types of features in gameplay at the design level so that what we're encouraging in the real world is the buildup of community rather than the sort of contention against others who are playing the game? And we're still, you know, we have a bunch of games. I think Ingress is a game that you can point to where people are really, really competitive
00:14:18
Speaker
And that gets into the real world and it's a shared game board. So anything I do to the game is going to be reflected in other players and people get really passionate about it. So I would say, I mean, this is kind of generic answer because I don't want to get too into the weeds, but ensuring that we are being thoughtful, not just about our reactive presence for players and that they have a place to go with their concerns, but also getting really, really smart about how we can detect
00:14:44
Speaker
and even prohibit this type of behavior through better game design.
Future of Digital Gaming
00:14:49
Speaker
And I do think that's a more prominent conversation now than before. And if I zoom out, my head kind of thinks we're getting as a world a little bit better at recognizing that we can't completely disambiguate online from real world. We have to take these things into consideration at the same time, even if we're making a game that's going to have somebody sitting on their couch looking at their mobile phone.
00:15:11
Speaker
or, you know, logging on to like chat with people in a chat room. Yeah, I would say that's sort of, that's sort of my, my generalized, highly generalized take on it. I love it. And you know, through the podcast, I've learned more about inclusive design, which is in the beginning, you kind of taken all these factors when you're designing this and keep it in hand. And to Ben, Ben's gonna be a little different in this, in this
00:15:35
Speaker
Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, but where Ben's coming more from the publisher's perspective, right? So he's working directly with studios, I'd say it's almost more B2B, but he definitely has a big C following of everyone that listens to himself. And then Carl's working with the players, playing with the players. Ben, when it comes to the studios that you're working with, or you're helping consult with,
00:15:54
Speaker
do you look at these types of inclusive design things? Are you basically looking at them from the community perspective? Because you do a great job of community building online. How does this knowledge transfer get passed down to those studios that you're working with? Yeah, I mean, we are always trying to supply studios with the latest
00:16:14
Speaker
the latest advice, the latest findings, because that's ultimately where the players live in all of these different kinds of communities, different places. And realistically, as we look at each of the games that we're supporting, and we're not a genre publisher, so we're not only going after one area, we have to be flexible to know, okay, for this type of game, the audience is in these places. And these are the factors that
00:16:42
Speaker
kind of come into play in those places because, you know, as you look at where an audience is living, where a community is living, you know, there's different factors. I mean, Anna worked at Twitter, Twitter audience, and if a game is heavy, you know, influenced by an audience in Twitter, that audience is going to be very different than a
00:17:06
Speaker
Instagram heavy audience and each of these different types of games if it's a cozy game or you know different different style game has a different place that their audience is living and so we have
00:17:20
Speaker
best do we give them the resources to succeed with the audiences they're kind of going after. And then to kind of go back a little bit to what Carlos was talking to, the other thing I think about is, you know, as to why this online, is it live services? What is it that's bringing us so much into this online space? I think we're just in this kind of next era. If we think about the eras of games, we go, we look at arcade era,
00:17:49
Speaker
you know, we look at the console era and we've been in this digital era that blends a physical and digital kind of space, but we're also moving into this completely digital era of cloud that's coming fast in the next five to 10 years. And in that era, it's going to be, well, you can play anything, anywhere on any device with anybody. And
00:18:17
Speaker
We're going to be living digitally and physically, but we're not going to be tethered to anything. And that's what's going to be really unique. And so I think we're only further moving into it. I think live services might have had an influence, but in the future world, it might not be so, so much about the live services. Any type of game can kind of live in this more, in this completely digital world.
00:18:42
Speaker
And you can bring your games anywhere and I just see a world where you're at a bar and if there's a TV or some kind of screen, you can throw the game whatever you're playing onto that screen and you're able to really live whatever kind of gaming life you want. And if you want that to be a strategy game, it could be a strategy game. If you want that to be a live surface game or
00:19:03
Speaker
You know, whatever it is, I think it's the flexibility and accessibility that's kind of the future of this kind of digital world. And then, you know, how do we keep people, you know, safe and how do we keep, you know, the experiences right for the communities? It just becomes more complicated the more we get into it, but we'll learn and we'll get tools to kind of adapt as we go as well.
00:19:29
Speaker
That's well said, and you mentioned kind of the cloud, which I love, but in a similar, not so similar way, is that the channel where people are congregating is also shifting, right? In the past few years, we've seen a giant rise of Discord. Before that, everyone was trying to keep things in-game. We've had Reddit, we've had all these different tools where communities are gathering, and you have to decide at a certain point where you're going to try and focus your resources. It's hard to go really thin across all the different channels out there.
00:19:57
Speaker
Both the games that you guys work with, Anna and Carlos, Minecraft and Monster Hunter, Pokemon, all those games, are all kid-related games. And there's adults that play it as well, don't get me wrong, right? But there's this whole COPPA, there's this whole Protect the Children type of thing as well. And again, trying to follow what networks they're going on.
00:20:15
Speaker
I don't know how I asked this question, so I'm just going to ask it is, how do you decide to prioritize which determined networks you want to make sure you're protecting? And obviously, the target has to change. How do you how do you make those decisions? And, Carlos, if you want to kick us off there.
00:20:32
Speaker
Just to make sure I understood your question, you mean in terms of thinking about the whole ecosystem, right? Like where our players are at, not only our games, but where they are communicating and different things, right? Exactly. Yeah. So that is a really important question. You think about the full
00:20:54
Speaker
ecosystem with examples that you shared as Discord and Reddit and all those things are, of course, very important, very important from the point of view of the practice of community management, right? Because that's where you are interacting with your players in those communities, you're building community there. But there's something from the point of view of safety, from my perspective, that's really important to put an emphasis here, is that
00:21:21
Speaker
the environments that we host, and when I say we as in Minecraft is hosting, right, that Xbox, Microsoft is hosting, then we have the full possibility there of implementing safety features, affordances, of doing human moderation, because that, those experiences, those interactions exist in our hosted environments, right? So it's really important to talk about this, especially when you're,
00:21:49
Speaker
you're considering folks who are not in the industry, who are parents and players, they might not understand that the conversation is happening on an environment that is not hosted by the game developer at all. It's not hosted by them. They don't have control. They don't have the authority even to make changes or take action in a lot of cases. So it's really important.
00:22:17
Speaker
Back to your question, how do we focus? Well, the primary part of this question is, the answer is we focus on what we host, right? This is absolutely important that we have to do a great job when it comes to safety of the places that we host. And that means having a lot of great safety affordances, doing things really well when it comes to player abuse reporting.
00:22:41
Speaker
having proactive scanning, so we're not just doing reactive moderation, we're also doing proactive things, using tools like chat filtering, things like that, but also having amazing moderators. In those hosted environments, we get to do that. We get to put our full safety switch, innovate, find ways of educating players, of reinforcing normative, positive pro-social behaviors, and all those things.
00:23:10
Speaker
How do we invest on the other areas? How do we choose what to focus on? So I'll give you an example. Minecraft has a lot of private servers. Those are not servers hosted by us. They're hosted by the community. When I joined the team, I knew that that would be a great opportunity. How do we incentivize the adoption of safety best practices? How do we
00:23:40
Speaker
bring the community along to understand the importance of that so they follow those best practices, right? Because we can't go and just simply implement it. We need to incentivize to work with them. That's why we created the official Minecraft server list. It's findmcserver.com. And if you go on that site, you can see that that's a partnership between us, between Mojang Studios and GamerSafer, where we are
00:24:08
Speaker
working with the community of servers and they get badges that show their commitment to a lot of great community management practices, security and safety practices. And as they get those badges, they are featured on the site because it's free to them, right? Like they are not having to pay anything to join, they just have to show the commitment to that. So that's an example of how we're prioritizing an area that is not
00:24:36
Speaker
hosted by us, but we are working with the community, with our partners to get them started on that journey, right? To help them follow those safety best practices and give them the spotlight on that website so they can attract more players. They grow their servers and grow their business as well, right? So it gets really nuanced when you talk about other tools, right?
00:25:05
Speaker
communities that are outside of the things we host. But then I will finalize with this point that it's so crucial. We say this a lot and it's so true. When it comes to player safety, I don't see competition. I see all of us coming together and there's so many wonderful coalitions.
00:25:23
Speaker
and wonderful things out there. One of those, I'm a co-founder of the Fair Play Alliance. And there are many other places where a lot of those companies you're talking about, they collaborate, right? Like they get to work together in a non-competitive way. Really, like how can we improve the safety and well-being of our players all up? Because let's face it, a lot of times the same player playing Minecraft could be the same player who is on Pokémon and other games, right?
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah. And the same question, I want to kind of add a little bit at the end where, you know, building a community is not an easy thing to do. It's building a village, getting people to come to the village, getting people to support the village, and eventually the village becomes self sufficient. And maybe you can take a step back. And my question is, when you can kind of take a step back and let the community
00:26:16
Speaker
Not self-governed, but give them enough authority to do what they're going to do. Does it get easier or harder because then all of a sudden you have to worry about what can happen kind of rogue? Yeah, I don't necessarily think that a community ever really gets to a true set it and forget it stage. I think that
00:26:33
Speaker
Um, you know, when we're, we're talking about a successful community, um, and I'll start now as Carlos did thinking of a hosted community. Um, I couldn't agree more with, with what Carlos said. When you're hosting, you have a different sort of commitment and a different, um,
00:26:50
Speaker
a different responsibility to that community because you have, presumably, are coming from a place, a company that has made the safety of its players a priority. But beyond that, you're partnering across the company. If you're a big place or if you're small, you're trying to think about, okay,
00:27:09
Speaker
What's the, how do we imbue this community with sort of a sense of the vibes of our game? How do we imbue this community with the kind of culture that we want our players to be able to foster? And when you're being really aspirational,
Managing Multi-platform Communities
00:27:25
Speaker
you want to think that you'll bring together
00:27:28
Speaker
people and bring out the best in these people, and they will support one another. Your marketing colleagues are going to be interested. Your community team is going to be interested. Your support team is going to be interested. Your trust and safety team is going to be interested. And when you're talking about, I think, a vibrant, really humming kind of community, each of those functions may at certain points kind of turn up the volume of their commitment with that community, depending on what your current community goals are.
00:27:55
Speaker
I can say in my professional past, I've had moments where we're really leaning very heavily on our trust and safety colleagues because something has gotten out of hand and we feel like we're not upholding our
00:28:09
Speaker
part of the deal for the players. We need to create a safer place and that can also be a part of, you know, how you choose to moderate and engage with the voices on your community. You're always going to have your loudest kind of players. So how do you find ways to incentivize other players to be participating in the conversation or communicating and interacting with one another?
00:28:33
Speaker
in a community that you're not hosting, it gets a little bit trickier. And I think, you know, for us, it's a matter of looking at, you know, you're starting a community strategy, say, from scratch, or you're trying to revise one.
00:28:46
Speaker
It starts with what your constraints are, in my experience. So we have IP partners. What are some of the requirements that they might have? What are some of the requirements that our cross-functional stakeholders might have? Let's start by setting out the guidelines and the guardrails for what this community is not. And within that constraint, get really creative to achieve the goals that we would have for that community.
00:29:11
Speaker
And for us, with Pokémon Go, again, kind of hitting on that idea that we understood immediately that there were micro-communities of real-world game players that we wanted to tap into. We knew they must be online, and where were they online? And we found pockets of them, big and small, in places like Reddit, obviously Discord more and more.
00:29:33
Speaker
Twitter now X. We still have a cohort of players there. It changes based on geography. And so our strategy ends up being, all right, so we're not going to have one centralized place and be a center of gravity that people come to us. We're going to go connect to them and find out
00:29:50
Speaker
what the best way is to connect with these authentic voices and understand what their experience is and how we might be able to improve that. And it ends up feeling, I hesitate to use the word fractured because that might seem like a bad word, but I actually think it just means we need to be really agile and really creative because kids are very trend driven and it's hard to keep track.
00:30:15
Speaker
So we rely very heavily on every single voice across our company to be able to let us know when there might be a new place where people are popping up talking about our games.
00:30:25
Speaker
I love what you said on how when you build a community, there are those loud vocal people because every community has them. The problem is how do you get the others to start speaking up and raising their voices? Someone once told me that a lot of AI is being trained on Facebook data. And what basically AI is learning is that humans like to fight each other. When you go online, the most vocal people online are all arguing with each other. And it's just like, oh my God, that's a great point.
00:30:50
Speaker
the most vocal people, the only people that speak online are that 10% that are vocal, that how do you get the other 90% to actually step up and do something? And it's not easy, right? That's the challenge and all this is how do you get others engaged? I have a similar question for you, Ben, and feel free to answer that as well. But kind of you're, I'm looking again, more from a B2B perspective on how do you create these partnerships? How do you amplify the reach of yourself as well as the studios that you're working with to make sure that others in the community are hearing that basically creating that network effect
00:31:18
Speaker
So people now know who Midwest games are, who the studios are that work with them. Yeah, what's interesting about our situation, obviously, we're in a very different situation than both Carlos and Anna because we're working to even just establish awareness with something. And so with that, I go back to the work control and
00:31:40
Speaker
And ultimately, control is something that is nice to have. It's something you earn over time. You earn the ability to have control over something because you have enough of an audience
00:31:59
Speaker
of a privilege to have that. Whereas I'm working with developers that don't. They have to give up control. They have to allow audiences to take something and make it what they want it to be. And sometimes that changes the trajectory
00:32:16
Speaker
of what a studio is doing, what a game is being made. You look at games that come out in early access. Well, based on how the communities are reacting and where they're reacting, it can really affect and change what the direction of a game is. And so for us, we want to create a
00:32:39
Speaker
exposure for each of the games that we come out with and that's a piece of value that we bring as a publisher.
00:32:52
Speaker
know how to do some of these things. We know how to react to certain conversations. We've seen these things happen before and we can guide people in the right direction. But the reality is we have to be flexible because we're establishing audiences. We're trying to figure out, well, where does this live? If it's a certain type of game, I spoke to this a little bit earlier as well,
00:33:18
Speaker
Uh, we might traditionally, it might be on Reddit. It might, you know, it might be a more of a discord type of audience type of game. Uh, and we'll want to go after that and try those platforms, but you never know. It might take off in a completely different direction.
00:33:37
Speaker
react towards what where the audience is showing up how they're reacting to it and you know as marketers which is a piece of our business you know we look at the demographics and we look at like the audiences were going after but you never know who actually might attach on to it and the gaming audience is so broad these days you know it's nearing
00:34:01
Speaker
gamers worldwide. There's so many different types of audiences and so many different places. If you try to say, oh, this is a game that's for females that are 24 to 30 and whatever,
00:34:16
Speaker
it might be males that are 40 to 50 that attach onto it. And you have to just go with whatever that audience is that is really resonating and try to maximize that and then try to expand it over time. And so we're really thinking about that. And then again, because we're not a genre publisher.
00:34:34
Speaker
We're bringing in people from different audiences and trying to get them to try something that's maybe outside of their norm type of game. And so if we become really good at that, we can take somebody that is used to playing JRPGs and introduce them to a beat them up and try to get them to play that game.
00:34:56
Speaker
And that's ultimately how we help developers, is we're able to give those audiences and try to grow them over time.
00:35:10
Speaker
and that's always changing as well. And so we have to, you know, TikTok obviously has grown in the gaming scene, but that might change, you know, if they have to shut down in America or sell or whatever that is, and there might be something else that emerges and the folks that benefit the most are the folks that jump on, you know, early into those areas and maximize that audience while it's available.
00:35:38
Speaker
The developers that you're working with, Ben, are they ever resistant to new strategies when they're so dead set? I know my audience. I know my audience. I'm building my baby. People don't like to be told that their baby is ugly, right? Do you deal with resistance or do you think there's enough clout that comes behind what you say where people are accepting of it?
00:35:59
Speaker
I mean, any healthy relationship has what I call healthy friction, you know, there's the belief in what something is, and then there's a push on, oh, but think about it this way, or at least, you know, consider, you know, different alternatives, or what if you don't hit that audience? What's your backup, you know, route? So, yeah, I mean, absolutely, with any, you know, I've worked in enough creative places, you know, I've had films on Netflix, and then games on Netflix, and
00:36:24
Speaker
And I've been in radio, I've been in esports, I've been in all these different areas. No matter what, creative and operation sometimes has different friction points. And you can tell someone, hey, this is what we think it is, and they might have a different perspective on it.
00:36:44
Speaker
The folks that are most open and vulnerable and willing to be like okay well that's an interesting perspective maybe if we just start and try certain things in this area we can go after that you know those are the kind of collaborative relationships you want developers and we consider that in our due diligence process.
00:37:02
Speaker
Are they somebody that wants to collaborate with us, that wants to take advantage of the fact that we have knowledge? No, are we always right? Absolutely not. We are wrong, but at times as well as anybody else, but we also have a lot to offer. And so looking at collaboration is so key and not somebody that's going to be like, no, this is absolutely what this game is.
00:37:27
Speaker
like zero doubt, this is my audience, this is exactly how it's gonna hit, this is how many units we're gonna sell. Like anyone that tells you an exact, honestly doesn't know what they're talking about because you just never know in this industry and you have to flex towards what is working. And once it succeed, well, it seems like they've known their audience from the beginning. It's very doubtful they did. They pivoted towards what ultimately was
00:37:55
Speaker
was truly of their audience and they did things to serve that audience. Thank you. Carlos, in 2011 Minecraft was released so we're on about 13 years of Minecraft going from Mojang to acquired 15 years. I'm not a good math person, this is why I'm here.
00:38:17
Speaker
How do you keep a community engaged for 15
Player Creativity and Game Development
00:38:20
Speaker
years? We talked very briefly of live ops, and I want to talk about it for long, but you've kept the game alive longer than most games have been alive. So how do you engage with the community? How do you keep the community coming back for more? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I've been
00:38:40
Speaker
My journey with Minecraft has been a small part of that journey, two of the 15 years. It is 15 years next month, which is so awesome to see. And I'll just tell you a story. Just before I was literally about to sign my contract with Mojang, I was at bat in London in the UK, the educational conference.
00:39:06
Speaker
Like I literally had the contract in my inbox, right? Ready to sign it. I was there at work and I saw this presentation by Oxford, the university, presenting on how they use Minecraft education to teach English as a second language to kids. And that was like a really big mind blowing moment for me. Like it just like, okay, I, um,
00:39:35
Speaker
making the right career change here. I knew at that moment that it was the... I already knew it, but it just reinforced it. And I'm using this example, this story, because I think that speaks to what Minecraft is. It really is a lot of possibility. It's a lot of creativity. There's so many amazing things that you can do with the game.
00:40:05
Speaker
I don't remember exactly the name of the person, but it has been said that Minecraft is the best educational tool that that is. The best way to teach somebody something, right? And just the amount of the possibility of like problem solving, of creating things, whatever you want to create, right? Like really like that sandbox. I think that appeal is
00:40:30
Speaker
essential to what the game is right so i think it's important to start there but how do you keep something as relevant as that for that long my answer goes to honoring that honoring the fact that the community the players that's it's their game
00:40:52
Speaker
right? It's their game as much as Minecraft is for everybody, for everyone. So honoring the fact that it is a game that they take great ownership. It's my game. I get to do what I want to do with it. I get to create. I get to play with others. So respecting that, right? Like respecting
00:41:13
Speaker
something that you have built over so many years that has a story, that has a lore, that has a lot of different principles, even when you think about design principles, right? The way that the game is designed, the way that the organization works with creators, with all the people who are playing the game. I think it's respecting that, it's respecting, honoring that, including their voices, understanding what people want,
00:41:42
Speaker
This is what I have seen in my career, not just Minecraft, is that the really successful games, they have such a special relationship with their community. Like, there's a really touching relationship between developer and community. It's something that goes beyond the game, right?
00:42:02
Speaker
And that example, I think, goes really well. You get you have Minecraft, you have Minecraft education, you have different versions of the game. You know, you have Minecraft books, right? Like there's so many things that you can do that relate to that world relate. And now I take us back to the beginning of our chat when I said community of belonging.
00:42:22
Speaker
When you belong to something larger than you, something that is really purposeful, meaningful to you, I see that games have that possibility, right? If you make it that resonant and meaningful to somebody and you respect their voices, I believe you are already on your path to have something that relevant for that long.
00:42:46
Speaker
Fabulous. I love how you put that respect what the game is. I mean, some people try to come in and create a sequel that's completely different, doesn't play the same way as that first game was, and it just completely kind of flops. So respect what you've created is its own ecosystem at this point, and it is delicate. So let it be what it is.
00:43:04
Speaker
And then a similar type of question, right? You've had Pokemon Go that launched so many years ago, and now you have Monster Hunter, which is similar premise. How did you take feedback from the community about what was going on in Pokemon and take that feedback and turn it into Monster Hunter? That's a great question, Greg. I think for, you know, what works with Pokemon Go, there's a lot that works, but I'm going to focus on this idea of community.
00:43:32
Speaker
And I'm kind of thinking about what Carlos just said, and I love this idea that you respect the game, but you respect the players and their commitment and attachment to it. And that attachment can feel quite deep. When I first attended Pokemon Go Fest, it was in Seattle in 2022, we do a few massive events, Pokemon Go Fest events every year. And this was my first one, and I'm in a...
00:44:01
Speaker
a function in operation support player experience where a lot of the interactions that I get to be a part of or try to tend to are the moments where people are running into trouble with the game or need some help or need to get unblocked. So we see that hopefully very slim margin of player who might be a little frustrated or very eager to just get through with us and get back to the game. Going to Pokemon Go Fest, suddenly I was surrounded by
00:44:27
Speaker
thousands and thousands of people who defied any demographic categorization.
00:44:33
Speaker
And it was more moving than I anticipated to be in the support tent and watch people of all ages, all cultural backgrounds playing together, the kinds of people playing together who had, you know, they'll come to you and tell you their stories. Oh, we met on this hill road and read it and we became friends and this is our first time seeing each other in person. And these stories that,
00:44:58
Speaker
really kind of bring home into reality what it means to find a community of your people. And you just get to watch it and realize that the game is a facilitator, right? The game is cool, but the game is kind of not really the point. And that is deeply inspirational. And as a result, we try to get as many Niantics as we can to go to these events to just see that we facilitate real world community finding that is profound in people's lives and
00:45:28
Speaker
witnessing that helps you respect that and helps you preserve that. And so as we're developing other real world games, certainly the concept of community, how are we going to bring people together with this game? How are we going to facilitate the creation of yet more communities who can find both real world and online joy together through our games? And so for Monster Hunter,
00:45:56
Speaker
We're planning some of our first real world events. Looking very much, very much, very much looking forward to those. And you know, that's a strong, Capcom has been a strong partner and this IP is extremely beloved. And so there was a lot for us to build on there. And I think if you are a Monster Hunter fan and you've played our Monster Hunter mobile game, you can see there was a lot of attention and respect given to that IP. And I think that that sort of through line
00:46:25
Speaker
has been that can feel like a needle that you need to thread and being on the side where you're just kind of waiting for the players and ready to support them and being kind of reactively prepared from a community perspective seeing that needle get threaded just you you feel it on the other end of it you feel it on the other end when the players need help with the game their urgency to get back into it the the veracity of their feedback
00:46:50
Speaker
That stuff has just felt like something we needed to harness and really fast. And I think that to me is really that through line that we have with Pokemon. The communities that we create, the real world events that we produce to help facilitate those interactions, that's our special sauce for sure.
00:47:10
Speaker
similar question for you, Ben, but whereas we have two very established IPs here, right? You're building up multiple potential IPs coming up. So do you take into kind of, hey, what type of research do you do? Are you taking a look at these other communities out there that exist? Are you taking a look at the IPs that your studios are building out and looking at like, I see you as basically having this
00:47:34
Speaker
piece of pottery, right? That you could form into whatever shape you want, right? And you're kind of in those first stages. So do you put any thought into like, how do we want to do this from this stage? Or are we putting the cart before the horse here? Yeah, we think about it from the, you know, from the beginning from, you know, the moment a game is pitched to us, we're considering that as a piece because to your point of like pottery as an example, you know, there's certain types of pottery that you know, are
00:48:03
Speaker
You know, popular with, you know, popular selling wise, have a built-in community. And you have to create something and put out something that is, you know, that is familiar at times. You know, but it's all about the risk of like, how much do you lean into that?
00:48:24
Speaker
know some of these things you might be like yeah it's you know it is this game but in a sci-fi world uh you know and that's how you sell it um and and that allows you a built-in audience because if you love this other game um and then you love sci-fi you know that you're going to be attracted this to this type of game and so
00:48:48
Speaker
We take it into large consideration because we know what the ceiling is on any certain type of game. We know for beat-em-ups. Streets of Rage 4 sold 20 million units. So we're able to look at that and then compare any beat-em-ups to that. And then you look at the factors, well, what makes it different though?
00:49:13
Speaker
because what people don't want is the exact same thing over and over. Well, sometimes I do, you know, but it's usually the IP, you know, related. You know, I worked on a game called Borderlands, and Borderlands 1 was fantastic, but what made Borderlands 2 blow up was it just did every single aspect of Borderlands 1 better. And it just expanded upon it. People loved that. And so you have to take into
00:49:43
Speaker
into consideration all of these factors and you ultimately take bets and you say, hey,
00:49:50
Speaker
we think this will stand out and market. We think this has some really good selling points, has some audiences that we can hit on and we feel like we can pull people from that audience.
Intellectual Property and Trends
00:50:06
Speaker
The big challenge is we're fighting the data a little bit where a lot of people play legacy games, a lot of people play
00:50:14
Speaker
games that have been out for quite a while. You're kind of like the bread and butter or the thing you go back to always. It's really hard to break into. In fact, everyone's playing Fallout again right now. And that's because that's a comfort food type of game. You can go back, you play something you really enjoy. So how do you break through that new type of game? It says having something familiar helps.
00:50:41
Speaker
having something new and different helps you know that that game that came out with that was medieval but then you could drive a car through this medieval army i forget what the name of that game was but that like stood out in a major way because it was so different or squirrel with a gun uh because you know it's a squirrel and he has a gun
00:51:01
Speaker
It's a bit ridiculous. And things like that help stand out. And so you have to lean. Do you go with something really out there different? Or do you go with something that is a little bit more familiar? And then how do you balance those two things so you have enough that's different? And then how do you build an IP? My belief is you have to build an IP over time. It takes so much time. I mean, two great examples on this call between Pokemon and
00:51:30
Speaker
And Minecraft has taken a long time to build it to what it is today. My great example always is based on growing up was Ninja Turtles. That took a long time. It was a black and white comic at one point.
00:51:45
Speaker
that built overtime and they only just recently had their biggest successes and so they're on a huge upswing but you have to take time to build IP and too often people are trying to build really high-end IP overnight and they fail massively when you spend massive amounts of dollars you have to succeed right away
00:52:07
Speaker
Whereas in my space, you can build something slower. Minecraft was a perfect example of exactly the types of games we fund when it was much smaller, when it was just a small studio putting out this kind of different type of game, not going on somebody else's platform and doing things a little bit differently.
00:52:30
Speaker
We fund those types of games and then hope that they can build an audience over time, grow that audience, and be able to get to the point that they're able to expand upon it, whether it be with different iterations or going into different channels like Minecraft, going into education like it has. All of those areas are expandable, but you have to
00:52:58
Speaker
IP and I just think in this indie space is the safest space to do it because you're not spending fifty hundred million dollars on something you're able to spend you know a hundred thousand five hundred thousand dollars and start to build something that if you give it enough time and you do find an audience that audience can grow into something huge.
00:53:21
Speaker
There's a few things that I really love what you said. One thing is that IPs also aren't a sure thing, right? I mean, you've seen a few recent games that came out that have great IPs and they just didn't have it, right? It's not a slam dunk, like it may have been at one point in the past. And then you talked about Streets of Rage 4 and kind of some imitation. And I think
00:53:42
Speaker
I love the idea of taking a look at what works because they say, I mean, the quote is what, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Find what you love, see what you can improve upon it. Don't just copy it word for word, but if you love Streets of Rage, build the next better Streets of Rage. Like you said, Borderlands, Borderlands 2 is probably the greatest looter shooter that's been out there and it was a fantastic experience. So I love all that stuff and how you could take a look at that and how you can build that up.
00:54:05
Speaker
We are running low on time, so I have one last double question for each of you. The question is going to be, one, most importantly, what game are you playing now? And the second is, in 2024, have there been any trends that are getting you really excited that, in technology, that you want to be able to start testing out, playing around with? Carlos, let's start with you. OK. I have to preface this by saying that I'm a father of a toddler.
00:54:36
Speaker
And that means that my free time is very minimal. And typically my choice of what to do with my free time involves some physical exercising and music. So typically I'm on the drum kit. So it's better for me to answer your question as, what was the last game that I played?
00:54:58
Speaker
It's a better answer other than, of course, Minecraft I do play in the context of work. So that for sure is more of a frequent basis. But the last time I played on my personal time was Starfield. Good answer. Really, really enjoyed it. And what's the second part of your question, please? Trends in 2024 around gaming that excite you. That could be none. That could be none.
00:55:27
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. I'll do a rain check. Might come something to my mind. Anna, you're on the hot seat. All right.
00:55:41
Speaker
I have to be completely honest, the game I am playing obsessively right now is our own game. I'm playing Monster Hunter now like crazy. I'm very competitive with some of my colleagues here and I joined an internal dogfooding group because I have strong opinions and felt like I could share some of those directly with the team. So that's the game I'm currently obsessed with and it is easy to just pick that up and play it while I'm kind of like walking on my commute.
00:56:08
Speaker
plug for the real world game. Trends in gaming, you know, one trend that I just think we can't really ignore right now is generative AI. I can't really say I'm reluctant to label myself about having a feeling on generative AI. I would say I
00:56:25
Speaker
would say that we're in a bit of a hype cycle right now. Automation and automated intelligence has certainly been around a lot. But from my perspective as a leader in the player experience space, I can tell you that this is the number one conversation I'm having with any third-party partner that we have. This is the number one topic of conversation that executives around me want to hear me.
00:56:52
Speaker
weigh in on. I think that from a gaming perspective, there are some interesting things our team behind the game Peridot is doing right now that leverage LLMs that are really interesting and fun applications of it in the game that are
00:57:16
Speaker
just I think creative in a way that has just been a delight to engage with. So seeing that spectrum of conversation and use cases going from like, that is genuinely delightful and fun and wonderful to yes, I will sit in on your roadmap presentation to tell me where in your product the generative AI capabilities have been introduced. And so some of those are great conversations, but I think that trend is hard to ignore right now.
00:57:46
Speaker
Thank you. Carlos is ready to go with AI, too. Very quickly, I'm excited about the trend of great video game adaptations into series and movies. I mean, Last of Us just absolutely loved that adaptation. And I see more and more happening with a really high degree of quality and care. Can we parlay this into like a Fallout 5 conversation, since you might have some insider information.
00:58:13
Speaker
Well said, I agree with you. Fallout series was a fantastic show and Last of Us was as well. Ben, take us home. Let's hope that trend continues. There's a bunch more coming. Borderlands. Borderlands is on its way and Netflix has a million in the pipeline, Bioshock and others. So we'll see with that. So for me, what I'm playing right now, I'm playing three games. I jumped on the Manor Lords.
00:58:43
Speaker
bandwagon that obviously incredible wishlist numbers a publisher that I just like to look up to and is doing credible work hooded horse and and a one-man studio Slavic games that Created that game and so playing that it's incredible. It's early access
00:59:04
Speaker
that a ton. And then I go back to my comfort food, Starfield, as well. So I'm playing Starfield. And then I'm also needing a little cozy in my life. And so we just released a game called The Low Buy of Life. And so playing that as well, which is a super cozy puzzle adventure game that you should definitely check out as well. I have to do a little plug for that as well.
00:59:32
Speaker
But, and then the trend that I'm really interested in, and this is definitely like a bias, but I really believe in it, is subscription model and premium mobile and what's kind of happening in that space. And it's super interesting because part of the growth of free to play in the current mobile environment was around really restriction.
01:00:00
Speaker
Devices couldn't handle much. And so certain types of games were created that could. And then free-to-play really took off in a major way. But suddenly we're moving into an environment of, wait a second, these devices can handle premium experiences, can handle the things that were on consoles and other types of devices.
01:00:28
Speaker
And not only that, but, you know, suddenly subscription services are coming and delivering a whole bunch of them for a low price, a low monthly price where you can actually try out a ton of different games. You can play, you know, a lot of your favorite games are on there anyways. So, you know, seeing that with Netflix and Xbox Game Pass and others are coming into the space right now
01:00:58
Speaker
is really, really fascinating to me because I think it's going to completely change the mobile environment where my belief is if people were to be able to choose between
01:01:12
Speaker
about trying to basically convince you to give up more money compared to a game that is just a premium experience, you get the full experience, I think they're going to end up choosing that premium experience. And so it's just going to further expand accessibility for these premium games.
01:01:31
Speaker
And there's interesting business models and having i join netflix at the very beginning the films initiative i was that was how i had joined them and seeing what they what they did during the streaming wars and all that stuff you know that the video game stream wars are coming.
01:01:53
Speaker
And it's going to be fascinating to see what happens in that moment and what happens with all this premium content. And it's going to be a content battle, like who has the biggest IPs? Who's putting out the most content? All of that, I think, is going to help more games get to more audiences. And it's going to create accessibility to the point that
01:02:19
Speaker
everybody on this planet is gonna be able to have accessibility to games, and there's gonna be variety and options for everybody, no matter what kind of game you wanna play. And so that's what I'm super excited about that's starting to really move.
01:02:38
Speaker
I love it. And community will only help with those subscriptions as well, right? When you have to choose which ones you want to be a part of, whichever ones make you feel warmest inside, whichever one has the games that you like to play. It's gonna be an interesting future. And I think this is just such a great conversation. So first of all, I'm thankful for all of you to come out and talk about this. I think community is one of the most exciting things for me, and it has been for years on what's going on with this industry. I think there's been a lot of cool
01:03:03
Speaker
I've been sitting in the back and afraid to raise their voice, but then when you have games like World of Warcraft, right, that eventually people can start talking online. You have Minecraft, you have Pokemon, all these great IPs out there. And I think such a strong community, it just makes it more exciting for everyone that's involved. So I'm so appreciative to the three of you coming out here and explaining this. I'll give each of you a chance to say where we can find you. So, Carl, tell me your final words and where people can find you.
01:03:31
Speaker
Yeah, LinkedIn is the best way to find me in the professional world, please. Sure. I'll have a link to his LinkedIn. You can check it out.
01:03:42
Speaker
Similarly, I would just say LinkedIn if you wanted to find me and connect. Yep. Thank you. I appreciate you, Greg. Of course, Anna. Thank you. And for Ben, just to show you how dedicated Ben is to his community, he is flying out tomorrow to his wedding. So congratulations to Ben. And first of all, thank you for coming on and for everything that you provided today. So any final words and where can people find you? Yeah, people can find me.
01:04:06
Speaker
You'll find me on LinkedIn, whether you want to or not, just because my stuff seems to be going pretty viral on there. And so I'm on there, and then you can follow Midwest Games as well, or you can find us on any social platform. But we would love to.
01:04:28
Speaker
ton of games coming up. We have eight games signed. We're about to sign a few more. We'll be releasing games all year. And so hopefully you can give us a follow on social. Lots of excitement coming from Midwest. We'll have links to Niantic. We'll have links to Minecraft where you can find all the stuff. And once again, thank you to everyone. Thank you to Community Sift for helping with today's episode. And thanks for all coming out. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you.