IN THE LOOP with kapital k // W41 of 2023
The only gaming newsletter you need. I curate and aggregate content from across web2 & web3 to deliver it straight to your inbox.
Week 41 of 2023. Here are the top five headlines and fundraising announcements + a collection of content from independent creators that you missed this week!
GamesBeat // Gamers 43+ Outnumber GenZ — link
THOUGHTS: Mobile game ads are a $90 billion market and it's only getting bigger because a larger variety of exogenous brands will enter this market. But the largest market demographic is not who you think it is.
Monetizr surveyed 200k+ North American mobile game players. The results reveal that gamers age 43+ is a larger group than Millennials and GenZ COMBINED.
This shift challenges conventional assumptions. The demographic of mobile gamers in North America is changing and that presents opportunities for exogenous brands to reach these audiences in a novel way.
I've mentioned several times in this newsletter about brands like Gucci or Nike activating campaigns on Roblox. That's an example of exogenous brands (ie non-gaming brands) interacting with their target customer in a new medium. We're now seeing an expansion of to the other side of the spectrum.
Zynga // Halloween Campaign Across 17 Titles (Imagine What Would Happen If Sugartown Were Included) — link
THOUGHTS: Lots of headlines today! Zynga is activating a Halloween campaign across 17 games(!!). It's a pretty good lineup. The top games in the merge genre are Empires & Puzzles: Match-3 RPG and Merge Dragons and the top casino titles are Zynga Poker and Wizard of Oz Slots Games. There's even a sports sims game called Top Eleven Soccer Manager.
In 2023 YTD, these 17 games had 83M downloads and generated $635M. Normally, I don't care for these campaigns but with the recent launch of Sugartown, which only has 933 NFT owners, I think it would be insightful to showcase Zynga's level of reach in its web2 portfolio.
Assuming a 10% retention rate, there'd still be 8M players and if just 2% of these players decide to try Sugartown, that's 166k new players. Tbh, this is terrible math but it's good enough for some back-of-the-envelope analysis.
miHoYo // Dodging Apple App Store Fees, Twice — link
THOUGHTS: One of the largest and most popular mobile game just tried to avoid Apple's 30% fee, not once but twice in a month.
miHoYo creator of Genshin Impact, Honkai Stair Rails, etc. was directing players to their website to purchase 10%-discounted items. The game studio didn't publicly advertise this new method but rather the game's forums (also a mobile app) were directing players to web store.
Apple discovered this and removed the forum app from the App Store (lol).
The following week, miHoYo revealed another payment method within Alipay. Apple, once again, stopped this by disabling the feature.
Although the game studio may not attempt a third time, it's clear that it is discontent with Apple's fees. This is both unsurprising and surprising. Obviously, no one wants to pay Apple's 30% fee rake. But miHoYo has a close relationship with Apple — winning awards and being physically visited by Apple's CEO.
We also know that Epic Games recently filed an appeal on their legal case against Apple for the same situation. There are also numerous other attempts such as Pokemon Go Webstore and the new Monster Hunter Now Web Store. These are big names making big splashes so let's see how things shake out.
Disney x EA // Possible Acquisition of Electronic Arts — link
THOUGHTS: Disney is the content powerhouse. It’s traditional approach to gaming is to license global IPs such as Star Wars and Marvel to publishers like EA, Scopely, and many others. Now though the company of childhood dreams is planning to engage directly with gamers.
Just to give some context, a quick search on AppMagic.Rocks for titles including “Star Wars” or “Marvel” yielded nearly $4B in lifetime revenue, and that’s only on mobile. There are numerous other titles across platforms from PC to Console. Additionally, EA and Disney have had history working together for years. This move by Disney is an attempt to future-proof itself. There aren’t many stand-alone large-scale studios still available for the taking.GamesBeat // 6k+ Gaming Jobs Eliminated in 2023 — link
THOUGHTS: The games industry has lost 2% of its participants. 6000+ jobs were eliminated in 2023 YTD. There's been 103 rounds of layoffs with September being the highest with 17 rounds.
Embracer Group did 7 rounds. EA did 6. T2 had 4. Amazon, Microsoft, and Sony all did 3 rounds each. The highest employee layoffs goes to Unity with 900, then Epic at 830.
These waves of layoffs weren't exclusive to the gaming industry. We saw them across all of big tech. But most notable was Elon Musk’s culling of 50% of the staff at Twitter (now X). Musk’s actions set off a trend that is believed to be one of the undercurrents of the wave of layoffs.
Another driver of layoffs is the natural retraction of the games industry. During COVID, many game companies hired quickly to meet the boom in gaming. Fueled by cheap capital, these companies were able to raise more and hire more. Now the tides are turning due to higher interest rates and general malaise in the economy.
Diving a bit deeper, we see the more common reasons for layoffs such as restructuring, which we see in the case of Embracer Group, as well as cyclical ending or termination of work service contracts.
Looking ahead, we have the largest quarter for the games industry. We shall see what sales numbers we get from Q4 to see how game companies recalibrate post-Holiday season.
But this doesn't include esports organizations or web3 gaming companies.
Don’t miss out on next week’s IN THE LOOP w/ kapital k.
@MohamedFFouda // Horizontal Scaling for Fully On-Chain Games — link
@Okan_buidl // On-Chain Gaming Scalability (L3 as Game Severs) — link
@Spac3_gg // A Dive Into DarkForest (First Fully On-Chain Game) — link
@ElizaCrichtonS (gam3s.gg) // SEGA, Double Jump, and Oasys Bring Battle of Three Kingdoms to Web3 — link
@WolvesDAO // A Dive Into Sugartown — link
@HunterSolaire_ // 9 Games To Pay Attention To — link
thecoreloop // Weekly Alpha Gaming Metaverse Expedition (WAGME) #22 — link
SuperJoost Playlist // Platform Power, By The Numbers — link
SuperJoost Playlist // Shareholder Fall Guy — link
Niko Partners // Asian Games Go Digital: Esports Debut In HangZhou — link
GameDiscoverCo // ‘We Were Here’ Franchise Gave Away 7M Copies — link
GameDiscoverCo // Sony’s Bet on GaaS for PlayStation — link
Brutally Honest (Matej Lancaric) // #81 Break Down By Placements — link
Hit Points // Blood Sacrifice — link
MobileDevMemo // How to Train Your CFO (about probabilistic Measurement) — link
GameDev Reports // Weekly Gaming Reports Recap — link
GameDev Reports // Sensor Tower: How Bethesda & Microsoft Launched Starfield — link
Deconstructor of Fun // TWIG #253 Riccitiello Legacy / EA post-FIFA Numbers
Deconstructor of Fun // The Art of Hiring & Getting Hired by a16z Games Head of Talent
Deconstructor of Fun // AR Gaming Revived By Meta Quest 3
Konvoy Ventures // Founder of Crunchy Roll — link
Konvoy Ventures // Founder of Bungie (Creator of Halo) — link
Konvoy Ventures // Founder of Guitar Hero — link
a16z // A New Era of VR: From The Court to the Classroom
The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook // Judas, Writing & Narrative in Games with Bioshock
GameDeveloper // Inserting Coins With Josh Debonis & Nik Mikros
two & a half gamers // Alien Invasion Hybrid Casual Story
Unboxing // Riccitiello Retires from Unity & Polish Dev Unites
Naavik // How To Disrupt The Shooter Market
Naavik // Driving ROI with Data Analysis - Part 2
Space Rock Games // $0.9M // Web2 // Adventure — Developing Criminals Within, a co-op multiplayer adventure
Investors: Hillfarrance Venture Capital
Fast Travel Games // $4.0M // Web2 // VR — Publishing and developing new IPs for VR platforms
Investors: Handelsbanken Fonder, Brightly Ventures, Creades, Inbox Capital
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h/t to thecoreloop contributors: @0xkapital_k @chng_raymond @cloudxgmf @wassiecapital @iandaog @playtern @friandoteth @0xconglomerate @itsbambam
