AcquiredBenchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
145 min read · 28,509 words- 0:00 – 4:05
Why Acquired brought in guests: capping the Nintendo/Sega deep dives with Gamecraft’s creators
- MLMitch Lasky
I will say, I wanna give you guys just a, a pre-recording compliment. I forget what it's called, I- there's a name for it, but basically, it's where you're reading something in the newspaper about something that you were a part of, right? And you go, "People don't know anything," right? "This is so damn stupid." And then you turn the page, and there's something about foreign affairs, and you're like, "Wow, super interesting." Like, the thing you know about, you don't apply that same logic to the second thing. And I have to say, I have so much trust in your podcast because the stuff that you do that I was a part of, and there are many things you've done that you don't know that I was a part of, that I was a part of. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing] Oh.
- MLMitch Lasky
You guys are so good. Like, it's so accurate. It is really remarkable. Somehow you're able to tell a story that is actually as close to true as, as true exists.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, the secret is, we don't have people on the show, so-
- MLMitch Lasky
Right. [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... this is not gonna be that, but- [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
Who got the truth? Is it you, is it you, is it you? Who got the truth now? Is it you, is it you, is it you? Sit me down, say it straight, another story on the way. Who got the truth?
- SPSpeaker
Welcome to this special episode of Acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I'm David Rosenthal.
- SPSpeaker
And we are your hosts. After our deep dives into Nintendo and Sega, we wanted to do something special to cap off our gaming extravaganza, and we wanted that something to be a special with guests who are actually in the belly of the beast of the gaming industry. Fortunately, we knew just the people. So today, our conversation is with Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins. Mitch is perhaps the best games investor of all time, generating literally billions of dollars of returns from early investments in Riot Games, Discord, and That Game Company, not to mention Snapchat. Mitch was also an executive vice president at both EA and Activision, and took his own gaming company, Jamdat, public in 2004. Mitch, of course, was a partner at Benchmark in the Fab Five era that we chronicled on our Benchmark episode.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Which actually, we stole that line from Mitch when we were talking to him- [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... in the research, and that's how he referred to it.
- SPSpeaker
So we are joined by Mitch and Blake Robbins, Benchmark's current principal, who has also come up on previous episodes. Blake is one of the best thinkers in the world on the gaming landscape today, and Mitch and Blake just launched an incredible podcast called Gamecraft, that chronicles the history of the gaming industry from the business perspective.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And one other thing, if you are listening to this on the audio feed, we did a full video on this. It's up on YouTube. You can find it on our website or there. Uh, we did it at Benchmark's Woodside office, at, it turns out, they have another triangle table. [laughing]
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
So we have now recorded Acquired episodes at both of the famous Benchmark dinner tables.
- SPSpeaker
Well, listeners, as you know, we have an interview show called ACQ2. We've had back-to-back killer discussions with the CEOs of Retool and AngelList. AngelList, in particular, was, like, very mind-expanding for me on how to leverage AI to get huge, huge leverage in your business, like, specifically on the operations side of the house. And, uh, I think Avlak is one of the best thinkers about how to apply AI to kinda turn something that looked more like a services business historically into a true tech venture scale opportunity. So you can find ACQ2 in any podcasting app. Join the Slack. There's an incredible discussion of gaming history going on right there, right now, including a bunch of episode follow-ups, where David and I are learning from you all in real time, acquired.fm/slack. And without further ado, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have positions in the companies we discuss.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
As may our guests, and of course, their firm, Benchmark Capital, today.
- SPSpeaker
[chuckles] Yes, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only.
- 4:05 – 5:28
From “write a book” to “make a podcast”: the origin story of Gamecraft
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, I think an appropriate place to start might be, what inspired the two of you to go talk about this and create Gamecraft and create this podcast?
- MLMitch Lasky
Well, I think after I retired from Benchmark a couple of years ago, retired from active investing, obviously, the glide path out of venture [chuckles] is kind of a long glide path, so I'm still a- i- involved to this day. But, uh, after I, I retired from frontline investing, I really started to think about ways that I could be useful and, and helpful in the video game business, and whether that was, you know, doing boards without compensation, or whether it was helping young entrepreneurs or mentoring younger venture capitalists. And I thought, "You know, m- maybe I should just write a book." So I was very much inspired by a book that I think you, you know as well, right? The Genius of the System by Thomas Schatz. And that book is a remarkable book, in my opinion, because it really takes the business side of the film business back from the '20s to, say, the '50s, and really elevates the business side of the business, and shows how a lot of what we understood to be the creative part of the business really was a collaboration between creative people and business people. And I've always had that same sense of the video game business, and so I thought it might be fun to do something in that vein, where we, we showed the- what h- was happening on the business side and how it was informing what was happening on the creative side.
- 5:28 – 12:21
Business model constraints shape game design (and even retail tactics)
- BGBen Gilbert
And I think the common narrative is, video games are something created by creative geniuses, a Miyamoto-type person, and then the business models sort of rearrange around the creative vision, having consumers that flock to it. And I think already you're intro- introducing this interesting wedge of, uh, actually, there are very clear business models that guide where the water of creativity can flow, and that has been, for the last fifty years, what has defined the video game industry, not the other way around.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yes, and not to take anything away from people like Mr. Miyamoto, who I have-... infinite respect for him. I mean, he is a l- he's a l- a legend. He's a god amongst the video game designers, and I've had the great pleasure in my career of working with some incredible designers. And they, they are the leaders of the industry in many ways, but they are constrained quite a bit by the business models in which they operate. So just to give you an example, in the packaged goods era, y- your, your goal was to sell a disc and then get somebody to come back a year later and buy another disc. And that's a business model choice, and therefore, what you're gonna put on that disc is going to be informed by that business model. It's gotta have a degree of planned obsolescence to it, because if it doesn't, if you just bought one game and played it forever, that's the end of the video game business.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And that's how you get Final Fantasy VII.
- MLMitch Lasky
XIV! [laughing]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
XIV. [laughing]
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, I mean, think about how many FIFAs or Call of Dutys there's been at this point, and, and, and it's still firing on all cylinders, despite sort of the, the business models, which we'll talk about, rotating right underneath them, and those still thrive, uh, even to this day.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I think one of the super cool things for me, and the reason why Gamecraft, I think, has been listened to by far more people than just in the games industry, is that this dynamic applies to a lot of industries. Like, when we did our LVMH episode, the whole time I was thinking that, like, it's the same dynamic in any creative industry. Like, if you want to achieve success either as a creator and have people use and appreciate your work, or on the business side, like, you have to work together. You can't be at odds.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah, it's interesting. I actually... W- I really admired that LVMH episode, and, and there was a part of it where y- where in your Nintendo episode that kinda reminded me of the LVMH episode as well. Because w- those of us who had worked as competitors to Nintendo in the console business, and I did for par- a part of my career when I was running the studios at Activision, um, they had this-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
It's interesting you considered yourself a competitor to Nintendo.
- MLMitch Lasky
Well, they-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
But we'll come back to that.
- MLMitch Lasky
Uh, you know, there's, there's limited shelf space in Best Buy, and so for... They were very much a competitor for that shelf space, and so, uh, on the software side in particular. And they would, for example, if they had a new Metroid SKU or a new Zelda or whatever, they were very clever about only releasing a limited amount of inventory for Black Friday.
- BRBlake Robbins
[chuckles]
- MLMitch Lasky
And then the parents would go, because that was on the kid's Christmas list, and they would go to buy the, the disc, and it w- and they would be sold out, and panic would ensue.
- BRBlake Robbins
[chuckles]
- MLMitch Lasky
And then two weeks before Christmas or a week before Christmas, they would suddenly flood the shelves with all of the inventory that was available.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Huh.
- MLMitch Lasky
And s- and so everybody was back to the stores, and they... And it, it was just, it was genius, but it's something that only they could do because they had that sort of luxury good kind of vibe.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yep. So to bring it back, you didn't write a book.
- MLMitch Lasky
I wrote about a 200-page manuscript. Um, and I w- the idea, and those of you who haven't listened to Gamecraft, who are, who are listening to this podcast, uh, it's basically eight episodes, but they're topical episodes. And so we-
- BRBlake Robbins
Mm
- MLMitch Lasky
... we basically retell the same story from 1990, roughly, until the present, but we look at them through eight different lenses. And I thought that was kind of an interesting and unique approach, 'cause all the other histories of the video game business are very chronological, and very like, "And then this happened, and then this happened." And while ours does have a bit of that, "And then this happened, and then this happened," hopefully it's a little bit more interesting than that. So I, I, I finished it. I sent it to some friends of mine. They read it. They said, "This is great, but, like, nobody reads books." And so I was like, "Well, that's unfortunate, but I don't really know what to do with it," and I s- I could read it- I could do it as an audiobook. I could read it as a monologue. I don't know what to do with it. Uh, and then I had a fateful dinner in Boston with Malcolm Gladwell, and Malcolm... I've- I'm an investor in Pushkin, which is his, uh, podcasting company with Michael Lewis.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yep.
- MLMitch Lasky
And Michael and, and, uh, and Malcolm are, are both acquaintances of mine. And Malcolm was like, "Dude, you really have to do this as a podcast," and I [chuckles] and he was like, "You can't do- "
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Did he try to get you as- do it as part of Pushkin?
- MLMitch Lasky
I did submit it to Pushkin. They, they rejected me. [chuckles] Um...
- BRBlake Robbins
Whoa!
- MLMitch Lasky
But, uh- [chuckles]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
But why? Too niche?
- BRBlake Robbins
What a miss.
- 12:21 – 16:46
Gaming becomes universal: the rise of casual play and who counts as a ‘gamer’
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Mitch, when you were on the business executive side, did you have a sense of, like, how much you were impacting... Like, the work of the industry was impacting this whole generation?
- MLMitch Lasky
You know, it, it was a kind of a boiled frog-type situation for me because when I entered the industry, uh, my first gig really was in Dis- the formation of Disney Interactive, which was in the very, very early '90s. And, I mean, this was right around the time Bobby was taking over, uh, Activision, when he and Steve Wynn, basically financed by Steve Wynn, Bobby was, was, was buying Activision.
- BGBen Gilbert
I forgot Steve Wynn financed it.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah, Steve Wynn-
- BGBen Gilbert
Wow.
- MLMitch Lasky
The famous story. I don't know if you've... You guys have done an Activision episode.
- BGBen Gilbert
Way back before-
- BRBlake Robbins
Way back.
- BGBen Gilbert
We've done research.
- MLMitch Lasky
'Cause there was a-
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah
- MLMitch Lasky
... 'cause he, he basically, Bobby crashed the Cattlemen's Ball, uh, and without an invite, and basically did it so that he could buttonhole, uh- [laughing] Steve Wynn and get him to put the money up for the Act to, uh, buy Activision out of bankruptcy. Um-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Wow!
- MLMitch Lasky
And it was a genius deal because they renegotiated all the debt a- as into, into equity in the new entity. It was, uh, Bobby-
- BGBen Gilbert
Wow
- MLMitch Lasky
... Bob- Bobby was a, a brilliant, brilliant executive even back then. So, um, so when, when, when I was w- work at Disney and then subsequently at, in my startup and at Activision, this was still kind of the geeky era of, you know, the serious video game business. Obviously, Nintendo had brought the console business back in, in '85, but we were really only five, seven years into that, right? It's, it, it was, it, it was still a fairly recent phenomenon. And other than-
- BRBlake Robbins
And it was a corner of the toys industry, as we've talked about.
- MLMitch Lasky
And dominated by the Japanese tr- too, in general, right? I mean, there were a few... Obviously, Electronic Arts had gotten started, and Interplay existed, and there were a couple of others, but it was primarily-
- BRBlake Robbins
They were PC publishers.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah.
- BRBlake Robbins
Right.
- MLMitch Lasky
Primarily PC publishers. So that said, um, no, I had no real idea of what the impact was because I thought I was m- making games for myself, right-
- BGBen Gilbert
Mm
- MLMitch Lasky
... and other nerds like me.
- BGBen Gilbert
And the notion of casual gaming hadn't really hit its stride yet. So w- w- I mean, I think one of my big takeaways from Gamecraft is, uh, gaming is not for teenage boys. Gaming is a innately human activity that now we see in full bore. I mean, I flew down here this morning from Seattle, and, like, the amount of Candy Crush going on around me on the plane, like, gaming is a human activity. And I- during the era you're describing, it really hadn't fully permeated yet, absent maybe Snake on some early mobile phones?
- MLMitch Lasky
Not even. I mean, you think about it, it was, like, probably '96 was, uh, Barbie's Fashion Designer and, uh, some Hasbro games like Yahtzee and The Game of Life and other things like that, that they basically did very lame digital versions of.
- BGBen Gilbert
Mm-hmm.
- MLMitch Lasky
And that was kind of the beginning of the casual game revolution, really. Like, um... And it, and it happened very quickly, and those titles did incredibly well. But the mainstream video game industry always viewed them as kind of, uh, and frankly, to this day, still views a lot of the ca- what's happening in the casual game industry as, like, not the real games business, right?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Right.
- MLMitch Lasky
Um, and yet, you know, as, as we know, because we now know what the numbers look like, it's like it's most of the video game [chuckles] business, right? It's probably more than fifty percent of the video game business these days would be considered casual gaming by 1990s standards.
- 16:46 – 24:53
The eight ‘lenses’ of Gamecraft: free-to-play, distribution shifts, economies, forever games
- BGBen Gilbert
So we were going back and forth before recording here on sort of big takeaways from Gamecraft, and this is one of them. This feels like a huge beat to me. What are some of the other big beats for those who haven't listened yet?
- MLMitch Lasky
So, uh, the... I mean, just to very quickly review what the eight episodes are. So they're free to play, which was one of the real revolutionary business model changes in the industry. I mean, it's the equivalent of the film business g- uh, having television introduced, right? Where you, you went from, you know, a, a very formal, "Go buy a ticket and sit in the theater," to coming into your home.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Or even probably more apt, um, professional sports when television was introduced and, like, you know, it was only the upstart NFL that embraced it instead of fighting it.
- MLMitch Lasky
So I think that it was a revolution of that import, and I think we're still feeling the reverberations of it, uh, to this day, the, the impact of free-to-play and how it's changed, you know, how people consume games, how they play games, and how games are made. Because it requires a very different kind of game in order to be susceptible to a free-to-play mechanic than the old-school stuff everything onto a d- a disk and hope that it's worth sixty hours for sixty dollars. That's one of the episodes. We do an episode on the change in publishing from a packaged goods at retail business to an online distribution business. Really, the rise of Steam would be kind of indicative of that particular part of it. Uh, we do an episode on, uh, game economies-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yep
- MLMitch Lasky
... and how they've evolved from their very, very earliest stages to these incredibly sophisticated and now even Web3-enabled economies of our era.
- BRBlake Robbins
One of my favorite episodes is, is the forever games, which is really around this idea of, you know, with the shift to free to play, can a game actually endure forever, and what do those play patterns look like? And Mitch has these amazing sort of guidelines or just rules of, like, he thinks about it.
- SPSpeaker
... Going into listening to Gamecraft, I sort of had this high-level idea that there's more durability in the video game industry now than there used to be. Like, it used to be very hits-driven. I think a lot of people still believe, or a lot of investors look at the category as very hits-driven, but there's two different and very distinct reasons why there's more durability now. One is this concept of forever games. The other is the concept of, Mitch, I think you coined this term of, uh, platform-based publishers. Can you talk a little bit about each of those and, and how they sort of fuel each other, and how they're different, but how they both provide durability in the industry?
- MLMitch Lasky
Sure. I think the forever games are part of a continuum. I mean, there was durability in the early video game business. It was just not the games themselves that were durable, right?
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- MLMitch Lasky
The- either the franchises were durable... I mean, you look at FIFA, and, I mean, I started playing FIFA on Trip Hawkins' 3DO back in 1993, and I've been playing every year continuously for the last thirty years. And so if you really- if you think about it, that's a thirty-year persistent play pattern, very much kind of con- congruent with what we've described in the forever games episode with some of these long-duration play patterns. It's just that they packaged it very differently. Like, you were playing the same game, but you just had to go buy it again and again and again and again and again. And you look at the Nintendo portfolio, which you guys have done a really good job of exploring, and, um, you know, you look at the continuity of their brands, where they've been able to bring the same characters and the same kinds of play patterns back again and again as they shift from, you know, NES to SNES to Cube to Dreamcast to whatever. And, like, and all- and that is a sen- that is, in a sense, durability.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Uh, to my mind, one of the most genius things about Miyamoto is that he came up with, like, two to three really good stories, and they tell that story over and over and over. Every Mario game is the same story. Every Zelda game is the same story.
- MLMitch Lasky
Absolutely, and, and they're fine because as the graphics get better, as their ability to tell that story improves and is richer and deeper, then you can go back and explore that story again. And it's... And, and it has a kind of hero's journey quality to it, where you don't feel like you're seeing the same story again. It feels new and old at the same time.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, I, I, I think Grand Theft Auto is probably, like, one of the best examples of it. I think Grand Theft Auto V was probably released eight or nine years ago, and it still i- is, is a top game on Steam, and, and, and everyone still plays it, which is amazing. But when they do an update, it, it's, it's to the new generations, and it really blows your mind, but very similar play pattern, very similar story overall.
- MLMitch Lasky
And then to your point about the platform-based publishing, I think that's really been more of the way that the online distributors have created competitive advantage against the, their packaged goods rivals and, and how they built very similar businesses to a lot of the kinds of businesses that we've seen emerge and disrupt y- incumbent industries across the, the, the internet space. So, you know, Uber and the taxi industry or Airbnb and the hotel industry, where you, you aggregate demand on an online platform, and then you utilize that demand to leverage the supply side of the, of, of whatever industry that you're entering. And I think you look at Steam, and Steam shares many of those attributes, and I think that move, which was essentially perfected by Tencent with, uh, QQ and, and, and the things that they did w- sort of leveraging their messaging platform in the games business, that's been sort of the kill shot for, for platform-based publishing in the industry. But that is essentially... It's more about how you use the internet in a jujitsu-like way to massively disrupt the packaged goods industry, which was, up until that point, up until maybe 2003 or '04, absolutely dominant. And in fact, I think to your surprise, Blake, when we were discussing some of the, uh, the games in the early 2000s, you were like, "Oh, my God, that game was actually on a disc."
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yes.
- MLMitch Lasky
Like, it was surprising-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yes
- MLMitch Lasky
... to him to remember that some of these games-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well
- MLMitch Lasky
... that he grew up with as downloads w- were, were originated as packaged goods.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
The craziest thing is Steam was on a disc.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
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- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah, Vijay's story is amazing. Before founding Statsig, he spent 10 years at Facebook, where he led the development of their mobile app ad product, which, you know, went on to become a huge part of the Facebook business. He also had a first-row seat to all of Facebook's incredible product engineering tools that let them continuously experiment and roll out features to billions of users around the world.
- SPSpeaker
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- DRDavid Rosenthal
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- SPSpeaker
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- DRDavid Rosenthal
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- SPSpeaker
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- 24:53 – 28:02
Steam’s ‘updater’ becomes a platform: how distribution power consolidates
- BGBen Gilbert
Can you share how Steam got started?
- MLMitch Lasky
Sure. So, um, you know, the, the Valve team, Gabe Newell in particular, and his, his, uh, partner, Mike Harrington, they, uh, envisioned that they needed a, an updater, essentially, for their software because they were releasing these games like Half-Life 2 and, uh, CS: GO, um, and they wanted to be able to sort of affect the competitive balance after they released them, to fix bugs, to validate licenses, because piracy at this- in this era was still a real thing. And-
- BGBen Gilbert
And anytime you're selling box software, it's gonna be a big thing.
- MLMitch Lasky
It's absolutely the case. And so they, um, thought, "Hey, we could build this thing basically that would for- function as a software updater for our products. We'll put it on the disk, and, uh, you'll be- go up, log in, and then it'll download patches, and whatever, rebalance- rebalancings for your game," et cetera, et cetera. And so they went around to the rest of the industry. They went to even their old employers at Microsoft, where... They, they were early Microsoft employees, I think among the first twenty-five or so employees at Microsoft, so, uh, had good connections there. And they asked if Microsoft would be willing to build this tool for them, and they said no.
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- MLMitch Lasky
So they built it themselves. And then very incrementally after they released it originally, uh, with Half-Life in the box, as you say, and it just auto-installed when you installed the game.
- BGBen Gilbert
Mm.
- MLMitch Lasky
And then, you know, very incrementally over the next decade, they just kept adding features, community, uh, an app store, mods, all of these various features, and, and, and just ate the games industry. I mean, now it's an eight billion dollar a year business, right? I mean, it's just a remarkable, remarkable company.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Completely privately held.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yep.
- BGBen Gilbert
And is that Steam itself is an eight billion dollar or Valve all up?
- BRBlake Robbins
I, I think, I think it's Valve overall. When you think about actually the strategy that happened there, which is really the essence, and we talk about this in episode two of, of Gamecraft, where it's actually releasing the game, like we're talking about with Half-Life, and it's like this sneaky route of, oh, wait, like... I, I, I don't know how intentional it actually was in, in hindsight, but they've ended up building this platform, and they're like, "Oh, wait, now all these other developers want to use this," and now it's very clearly become... Like, it is the go-to place. Even, and, and a lot of people have followed, right? You have Activision having their own launcher. You have all these, uh-
- MLMitch Lasky
EA Origin.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, yeah, EA has as their launchers. They all have launchers, and they all are still forced, uh, well, not forced, but really pushed by the market to launch on Steam as well.
- MLMitch Lasky
Uh, we had, we had breakfast with Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft Games, yesterday, and we were talking about Steam, and Phil was like: "I put my games on Steam."
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah. Yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
Right? And this is Microsoft-
- BGBen Gilbert
It's crazy
- MLMitch Lasky
... who has the most market power of any company, maybe apart from Nintendo and Sony, you know, to, to, to roll their own, that he's putting games on Steam. And so you fish where the fish are.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, I think it... There's, there's an, the new iteration of that or what the, the latest attempt of being a platform-based publisher would actually probably be Epic, which, you know, Epic has Fortnite. It does incredibly well. They've launched that on their own launcher, and now they've been spending the past couple of years really trying to build out the Epic Game Store. And from my vantage point, i- it hasn't made nearly enough-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah
- BRBlake Robbins
... like a dent, like relative to Steam-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Because-
- BRBlake Robbins
Steam still holds all the power.
- 28:02 – 37:24
Platform-based publishers, Game Pass, and the next platform paradigm
- DRDavid Rosenthal
That's one of the things I wanted to ask you guys about, which is: Where are we in the business model journey of the platform-based publisher? Like, it almost feels like kinda like the rest of the internet, the platforms are starting to ossify. Uh, is, is that fair, or are there still opportunities?
- BGBen Gilbert
You're saying gaming is not ossifying?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
No, the gaming is.
- BGBen Gilbert
Mm.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Like, you know, you've got Steam, you've got obviously the consoles, you've got Microsoft, um, and Epic is trying, but, like, who else could really conceivably... And Tencent has done the best-
- MLMitch Lasky
Well, I think, I mean-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
But who could conceivably break in?
- MLMitch Lasky
W- this is maybe-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Or do we need a new paradigm?
- MLMitch Lasky
Well, I, I mean, I think the next one to go is gonna be Nintendo, right? I think they're... I think that's... If, if you're looking for a reason to invest in Nintendo as a, as a company, it's, it's, I, I think they're about to crack that nut, right, and, and, and enter the app store business in a meaningful way. I mean, they have the lowest, uh, third-party revenue per active user by, like, an incredible amount, right?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Mm.
- MLMitch Lasky
I mean, like hundreds of dollars to, like, twenty-five dollars, right? Like, in, versus the rest of their console competitors. So they're waiting for that lid to, to boil off there, I think. So that's, that... On, on the conventional platform-based publishing side. But I want to return to the question, uh, your original question, which I think is very interesting. I agree with you, and I think that, um, Game Pass from Microsoft is an interesting harbinger of maybe the end of the road for the platform-based publisher, or at least the end of this road for the platform-based publisher, because where they had historically aggregated users in an attempt to collapse the supply side, so aggregate demand to collapse supply, he's now, Phil, with Game Pass, aggregating supply again. When you look at the Activision deal, sixty-nine billion dollar acquisition of Activision, it's basically a, like, you know, Netflix or Apple or, or, or one of these other companies bui- buying exclusive content. And now I use the term "exclusive" - [chuckles] ... somewhat guardedly, because that's, this is currently in the European Commission as a, as a hot-button issue.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Clearly, this is Microsoft's strategy-
- MLMitch Lasky
Strategy
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... when they're doing this.
- MLMitch Lasky
Absolutely. So they're now back to aggregating supply in order to have enough viable IP in the plat- on the platform, such that you will continue to subscribe.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Which is really interesting. I mean, just speaking for me personally, as a gamer, that is an incredibly compelling value prop, of like, I could... I don't have a gaming PC. I don't really wanna go make a gaming PC. I don't really wanna go go deep in the Valve ecosystem. I don't wanna go deep in the Epic Games ecosystem. Uh, Microsoft is offering this really easy, all-you-can-eat option to me.
- MLMitch Lasky
And streamable in a lot of ways, right? So with the new, uh, xCloud-... platform, and, and I- I was a pioneering investor in this with Gaikai back in the day, and it wasn't really economically viable. But now with scale and Moore's Law and all these other things, we- and bandwidth improvements, we can now really do it well. And so, uh, you know, with a device like a Steam Deck or something like that, you know, you're, you're able to n- really avoid going down that path of building your own, uh, gaming PC.
- BGBen Gilbert
It is interesting that we're finally in the cloud gaming era. Like, this has been the dream for so long, and of course, there's this TikTok in computing to thin clients, thick clients, thin clients, thick clients. But, like, the whole thin client thing never really made its way to gaming. I remember I worked at Microsoft in 2012, and I was at our annual meeting in the old KeyArena, and I watched a demo of cloud gaming on a Windows phone with an Xbox controller. And I remember Steve Ballmer coming out and being like, "Next year is the year we're shipping this. It's finally happening." And here we are a decade later, and now it's- it is finally happening. [chuckles]
- BRBlake Robbins
It's like Tesla full self-driving. This year it's happening. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
This year, yes. Uh, m- my question to both of you on this is, business models are inherently intertwined with new technology waves. And how does cloud gaming change the business model of the games industry?
- MLMitch Lasky
I think there's one thing that's interesting about the cloud model, and o- one of my theses on why it didn't work back when I first tried it with, with Gaikai and with On- when OnLive was out as a competitor and, and some of these others-
- BRBlake Robbins
And that was early twenty tens?
- MLMitch Lasky
Early twenty tens. Um, was... It was a mismatch between the user and the technological opportunity. So you could stream these games without owning a, a gaming PC, but all the games that were really viable to stream were the kinds of games that gamers who already owned a damn PC were- wanted to play. So, you know, you look at Stadia from, you know, from Google. Like, what were the-- if you walked the floor at GDC and the launch year of Stadia, they were showing Assassin's Creed and, like, these other really high fidelity-
- BRBlake Robbins
Everybody already had those.
- MLMitch Lasky
Well- or if you were gonna play that game, you had a PlayStation or an Xbox-
- BRBlake Robbins
Mm
- MLMitch Lasky
... or you had a gaming PC that was capable of playing it. And so I think with the real expansion of the audience in these- those- in that intervening decade, you now have actually the question of, that, that, that, that David brought up, which is he d- he doesn't want to own one of these devices, and yet he wants to play those games. And I think that didn't really exist so much as a market back at- in the early days of streaming.
- BGBen Gilbert
Huh, so you think it's demand driven?
- MLMitch Lasky
I do. I do think, however, that the, the audience has expanded really in the, in the last twelve to fifteen years, and, and that, uh, this next generation of kids who've grown up on Fortnite-
- 37:24 – 51:31
Cross-play and consoles: why openness changes venture viability (and monetization)
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah. You, you mentioned that a little bit on the series, on the Gamecraft series, of Nintendo siding with Microsoft. Let, let's talk a little more about that.
- MLMitch Lasky
Sure. We don't talk about it that much on the series, just because I'm avoidant of talking about the console business and whatever. [chuckles] But, um... And, and let me, let me just try and explain why, right? Like, the console business has been essentially the same business since 1985. Really, since 1975, right? I mean, it's sell a box and sell some physical hardware for that box, and grudgingly allow it to be played online and grudgingly allow communication between users, right? And I don't find that that interesting from a business model perspective. I'm interested in revolutionary business models, and, and Gamecraft is really about that, right? It's about how these revolutionary business models, like, upended the industry, and frankly, there haven't been a lot of those in the console business. Now, there've been a lot of interesting developments, and, and you guys explore the story of Nintendo. It's a fascinating story, but it's kind of a human story, and it's a, you know, it, it, there's a- as, uh... Particularly your first episode, where you go way back, right? And you just talk about everybody who's everybody else's son-in-law. Um, [laughing] I mean, it's, it's an intensely human story in that regard.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, I feel like Nintendo had the... In, in my mind, they did have one revolutionary idea that they have just run with for the past 40 years, which was make incredible games and get people who are capable of making incredible games either in-house or make sure they publish on the platform.
- MLMitch Lasky
Right, and Blake-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
I don't think anybody else realized that at the time.
- MLMitch Lasky
No, I think that's right, and I think Blake put it really well when he was convincing me, uh, to, to do the episode, which was, he said, "Look, uh, the console, when it entered the market, was a revolutionary business model, because at the time, the arcade was the dominant way, and it was a quarter-drop." And so in some sense, it was almost like the equivalent of free-to-play. Because instead of having to sort of pay every time you wanted to touch the controls, now you had the thing in your living room, and you could play whenever you want.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah, it was a-
- BRBlake Robbins
You talk about the $60 for 60 hours of gameplay. That's r- literally the equation you were doing at, at the arcade, right? You're like, "I'm putting 25 cents in for-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Right
- BRBlake Robbins
... a minute," [chuckles] you know?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Well, it was d- it was... In, in the arcades, it was $6 for six minutes-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... of gameplay. [chuckles]
- BRBlake Robbins
Exactly. Exactly.
- MLMitch Lasky
So, so I accept that, and that's, [chuckles] that's why we-
- BRBlake Robbins
And, and I think the g-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yes
- BRBlake Robbins
... I think the, we, we really end that episode to, to bring this full circle around cross-platform, which is sort of the latest evolution of where the console business has been, where you had Microsoft and, and actually Nintendo embracing, and, and Fortnite was really the catalyst of this, to let them be able to play across these different platforms. So up until this point, uh, up until Fortnite, if you had an Xbox, you couldn't play with your friend who had a PlayStation or a Switch. And, and really, Nintendo and, and Microsoft went to war against Sony.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah, I mean, as, as Phil said, uh, in our, in our conversation yesterday, uh, he said, you know, Sony's perspective was, "If you wanna play with your friends, get them to buy a PlayStation."
- BRBlake Robbins
Yep.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Right. All these different business strategies are about figuring out in what way can you leverage an asset to get people to do something that eventually generates profit for you? And the way Sony was looking at it was, "Well, uh, you wanna play with your friends, so we're gonna use that as the carrot, stick, whatever you wanna call it, to get you to buy our console, which we actually don't make money on, to get you to buy our games, which we do make money on." And God, it's like hop, hop, hop, hop. And Nintendo and Microsoft ended up being quite odd bedfellows-
- MLMitch Lasky
Indeed
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... having completely the opposite strategy.
- MLMitch Lasky
Now, you could be cynical about it, and you could say that that is the result of the fact that Sony has dominant market share, and that if you were the dominant market share player, you might not be so embracing of openness either, right? [chuckles] Because you had a competitive advantage.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
But, uh, I think it's gonna come back to bite them in the ass over time.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
It's interesting, right? At one point, I think, on the series, you guys say that with your investor hats on, i- it would be really weird if an entrepreneur approached you today and said, "I'm gonna build a game for a console." But everything we're talking about, if the era of cross-play really comes to bear, that might change things. Do... Like, would you agree? Like, if it truly is that you could build a forever game with cross-play across console, PC, mobile... I mean, we, uh, as part of our Nintendo research, we talked to the CEO of a very large venture-backed gaming company that is not on the Switch right now, that is working very hard to come on the Switch for this very reason.
- MLMitch Lasky
So I will say, yes, it is now viable. I would not ca- uh, counsel any of my, uh, portfolio companies to launch on the console because the hoops that you have to jump through, uh, for approvals, for manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera, for just in general, are dire. And they are not the kind of thing that I would, I would sort of put in front of an, of a company that was struggling to find product-market fit. That said, I have green-lit a Switch, uh, SKU at that game company for Sky, and that has now come to market, and it is really meaningful, and we have a PlayStation 5 SKU as well. And so for a, a, an established product, where it's already found product-market fit on another platform, on a more open platform, sure, finding that adjunct, it's like, as, as Fortnite disclosed in the Apple lawsuit, uh, the, the cross-play players monetized like the new whales. I mean, they were monetizing at, at multiples of what the non-cross-play players were playing, and why not take advantage of that as a startup?
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Yeah, turn, it turns out that actually, like-
- BRBlake Robbins
... the cross-play, there, there's, there's different moments in, in console, where console really was the package good, and then at some point, like, the package good business for the games, and at some point, free-to-play games were able to, to thrive, and you have the Fortnites actually do really well. And if free-to-play games are really driven by social or playing with your friends, which Fortnite was, it's, it sort of, you need to have it on, on, on console and-
- 51:31 – 2:15:41
Investing philosophy: ‘distribution is king’ and why content alone isn’t enough
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Thank you, PitchBook. How do you, um, think about one of your other investments, That Game Company? Is That Game Company a platform-based publisher, or is it just, like, a really, really great modern studio, or is it something else?
- MLMitch Lasky
It's a great question. I think that the intention is for it to be a platform-based publisher. Game two was already in development, as is the beginnings of thinking about not only game three, but a sort of way to stitch the games together in a, in a more persistent and coherent way, and with more continuity. So I think Jenova... He wouldn't phrase it in that way. He wouldn't s- call it a platform-based publisher. He'd call it a digital theme park.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- MLMitch Lasky
Right? But the idea would be-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Which is sort of Nintendo-like.
- MLMitch Lasky
Which is sort of Nintendo-like in a way, right? And, and now Nintendo has a legit physical theme park to go along with their th- their virtual theme park. But, uh, I, I think he, he... Uh, but, but I do think it is, in that same vein, a, a plat... I would call it a platform-based publisher. And similarly, I think the greatest disagreement I had with the founders at Riot was when they... Uh, we sat down, and I was like, "Okay, great, we got a hit. Now we're gonna leverage this audience into the- into, into another hit, or into a third-party game, or into a licensed intellectual property." And they were like, "Nah, chill, man. We wanna be Blizzard. We wanna make a game every five years." And I'm like: I don't wanna, I don't wanna fund a studio, I wanna fund... Now, little did I know-
- SPSpeaker
Also, Blizzard, as you pointed out on GameCraft, only an independent company that had to figure out its funding for three years. The rest of its history, it's had, you know, Daddy Warbucks somewhere, figuring out how to fund it.
- MLMitch Lasky
Absolutely, and, and I was wrong because they just took their time to become a platform-based publisher. But, uh, they waited-
- BRBlake Robbins
Took them ten years, but-
- MLMitch Lasky
Took them ten years [chuckles]
- BRBlake Robbins
... But they did it.
- MLMitch Lasky
I'm not that patient.
- SPSpeaker
[laughing]
- MLMitch Lasky
But, uh, but there was an opportunity to start doing it after three years, and I think they- their strategy was, like, triple down on, on League of Legends, and let's make sure that we can- we can get it to all corners of the globe, and that we can really build a billion dollar plus annual revenue base, and the esports component, and the Worlds, and all these other things, and then we'll go and release Valorant, and Tactics, and some of these other things. Okay, fine, but ultimately, they got to the place I wanted them to go, it just took them seven years longer.
- BRBlake Robbins
I, i, I think it'd be interesting, if you're willing to share, Mitch, of just, like, what Jenova actually pitched for That Game Company back in the day. Because, you know, I've talked to Peter, I've talked to other people, and they still remember that pitch being just so, like... Just an amazing, amazing pitch. Because at the time, it, it, it's still was, like, a, a... For you to invest in a studio, right?
- MLMitch Lasky
Yes.
- BRBlake Robbins
Like, that, that would have been a, a big ask or a, a big leap of faith, and my understanding is you just crushed it on the pitch.
- MLMitch Lasky
By now, though-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
This is great, too, because I, I bet a lot of people listening will be like: What are you guys talking about? What is That Game Company?
- BRBlake Robbins
Sure. [chuckles]
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Are you referring to a specific thing or a different... [laughing]
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah. No, it's a little confusing, as in it's not my favorite name for a-
- BRBlake Robbins
[chuckles]
- MLMitch Lasky
... for a game company, although it's, it's indicative. I, I wanna actually, though, take a, a, a pause, just because I don't like funding studios, right? And, and I wrote about this, I think, uh, you, you reminded me of this 'cause you found it in some-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah
- MLMitch Lasky
... internet archive somewhere.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
Like, I blogged about this, like, fifteen years ago.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, I think it was, like, twenty eleven or something like that, and it's amazing. It's, it- like, the title, it... I mean, Mitch has probably removed all of his blog posts at this point. I think it was, like, Investing in Content.
- MLMitch Lasky
Right.
- 1:12:30 – 1:23:11
Esports: marketing engine, league models, and why some bets failed
- BGBen Gilbert
Where, where are we in the esports journey in terms of that being a sort of reinforcing marketing strategy? And, and I ask Blake 'cause-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, yeah
- BGBen Gilbert
... I mean, y- you, you, [chuckles] uh-
- MLMitch Lasky
[chuckles] No, you asked Blake for good reason.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, yeah. [chuckles]
- MLMitch Lasky
'Cause you're gonna get a very different answer if you ask me. [chuckles]
- BGBen Gilbert
Well, I want both your perspectives.
- BRBlake Robbins
I know, but actually, I think we'll... I think we'll be closer than you think, right? [laughing] Uh, and then I think it's, uh, I, I, I-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
And Blake, you helped start-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yes
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... a famous esports team.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yes, yes, yes.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
So you thought it was a good idea at some point?
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah, well, I would say, like, the-
- MLMitch Lasky
Well, maybe. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing] Not to lead the witness at all, but, uh...
- BRBlake Robbins
No, I think, I actually think if you, uh, like, for 100 Thieves, you know, which is an esports organization, that it has three pillars of it, which is, you know, content and a media side. It has an apparel side, which is also a, a thriving business, and then the esports side. And the view was always, which is probably similar to Mitch's, is that esports is marketing, right? And the view was, how do you start a brand in gaming, was-... Let's try and, and we'll, we'll go and get a spot in League of Legends, which was franchising at the time. That will legitimize the brand, and then we will be able to- and while hopefully that's eventually figures itself out and becomes sustainable, it will be great marketing and distribution for legitimizing a new brand in the gaming space. And I, I, I think there's all sorts of nuances around League, uh, like around League of Legends esports and Counter-Strike esports. And really, when, when you say the word esports, and this is probably, like, the real struggle of it, is it, it, it's quite literally just saying, like, "What do you think of sports and owning a sports team?" And it's like every single sport actually has its own, you know, pros and cons to it, and there's certain, certain leagues that maybe accrue more value than not. But for the most part, they really are like a marketing engine, and they can be a marketing engine for, for your organization if you have set it up that way. But, and for the most part, it's a marketing engine for the game itself and keeping it fresh.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
That, that, that's actually what I'm more curious about. David took it to, like, enterprise value of esports organizations, which I'm less, like-
- MLMitch Lasky
That's less interesting 'cause it's ob- an obvious failure. [laughing] Right? But no, no, it is.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
But, but, but is it a good idea for the-
- MLMitch Lasky
I think-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
... the game?
- MLMitch Lasky
You know, but with all due respect, there are some-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah
- MLMitch Lasky
... you know, yours, Team Liquid, there's a few of them that have kind of transcended and that are now brands in and of themselves of a certain sort and, you know, can sell merch and other stuff like that, and they compete in the League of Legends Worlds and get a lot of exposure and sell skins and all that other stuff.
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Hundred million viewers on that, and-
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah, and but even those are struggling financially. Those, those are not great- still not great businesses, but they're kind of viable businesses, right?
- BRBlake Robbins
Yes, yes.
- MLMitch Lasky
Um, but ul- ultimately, like, all of this is accruing benefit to the League of Legends-
- BRBlake Robbins
Right
- 1:23:11 – 1:57:11
Web3 gaming: from ‘tourists and scams’ to credible game-native implementations
- DRDavid Rosenthal
with Vouch just by going to vouch.us/acquired or telling them that Ben and David sent you. Thanks, Vouch. So we were talking a minute ago about, um, in gaming, as in many corners of the internet and investing, there are things that have lots of usage but don't have- have not attracted a lot of capital or attention or care. Perhaps we could talk about, uh, the opposite of that, [chuckles] with Web3 and crypto over the past few years, and specifically, Web3 and crypto gaming. You end Gamecraft, to my mind, kind of on a hopeful note about that. Would you agree? How are you feeling about it?
- MLMitch Lasky
I do, and, and I have been incredibly skeptical, right? Um, and I'm primarily skeptical because it's a character flaw of mine that I am part of the original tribe, right? I'm part of that OG gaming tribe, right? Like, maybe a slightly younger than the real OGs, like Bing and, and Trip, but kind of still part of that generation. And so I still am very protective of the video game business because it was this kind of nerd's paradise, like, back in that day, and, and, and I'm- I, I'm always resistant to tourism, right? I'm always resistant to people kind of coming in from outside and kind of claiming it as their own. And, and it's a character flaw, because it- I should be big tent, and I'm just not. Um, and this-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
At the same time, Riot was that, right? They, they'd never made a game before.
- MLMitch Lasky
They'd never made a game before, but man, those kids were so down. Like, they-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
[laughing]
- MLMitch Lasky
... they- no, they were. They were super hardcore. I would have adopted them, right? [laughing] I mean, they, they, they, they were-
- DRDavid Rosenthal
Oh.
- MLMitch Lasky
They, they deserved to be in the tribe. They were- they embraced the tribe. But a lot of the early Web3 gaming content came from crypto people slumming in games, right, who had no idea what they were doing, who made really crappy games that were really just an opportunity to, to mint and, and launch NFTs and participate in an NFT marketplace that had some lightweight, you know, game mode that was associated with it. And there's a bunch of those out there, and I don't wanna go through them chapter and verse, but they're hideous. This new crop that we're starting to see now, and I, I just have actually invested in one, oddly enough, um, just recently, uh, Supercell, the, um, Finn- Finn- Finnish game company, and, and I made a angel, a joint angel investment in an, in, in a deal that has a component of this. Uh, you saw EVE Online-... uh, just raised 40 million led by Andreessen Horowitz to make a, a crypto-enabled version of EVE.
- BRBlake Robbins
Oh, I didn't realize that.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah.
- BRBlake Robbins
And EVE is, like, a long-running... I mean, that's a- 20-year ... 15, 20-year-
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
18 years, I think.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yeah. Icelandic gaming company?
- MLMitch Lasky
Yes.
- BRBlake Robbins
Yes. Yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
So now you're seeing game people who've had a chance to kind of digest the technology and see if they can find an organic use for it, start to bring product to market, and that gives me a bit of hope, right? Because maybe because it aligns with my narrow view of the [chuckles] games business, but maybe also because we're gonna get good games out of it that don't seem like scams.
- BRBlake Robbins
And so for our audience who's not been paying attention to Web3 gaming, how is it mechanically different than traditional game business models, or even let's just say the, the current most popular free-to-play business model of gaming, uh, what new things do- does blockchain unlock?
- MLMitch Lasky
The good news is not that much, right? [laughing]
- BRBlake Robbins
[laughing]
- MLMitch Lasky
No, I think this... No, I, I honestly believe this, right? I think the best of them adhere very closely to the-
- BRBlake Robbins
Yes
- MLMitch Lasky
... conventional models, and they use the crypto component really almost to maybe, uh, improve or, or enhance an elder game. So for example, if you've been playing for a while and you're kind of bored with just grinding on the underlying free-to-play progression mechanic, there's another sphere where you could play, right? Where you could, you could take your character and mint it as an NFT. It gives you certain benefits in the, in, in the underlying game, but it's kind of gives you status that you... In, in the status competition that you and the other, like, very advanced players are, are, are engaged in. Because at some point, you know, if, if you've been playing Warcraft for- World of Warcraft for 15 years, you're, you're not running around killing chickens for gold, right? Like, you're, you're playing a very different [chuckles] kind of game-
- BRBlake Robbins
Right
- MLMitch Lasky
... and you're playing kind of a social game, right?
- BRBlake Robbins
Right.
- MLMitch Lasky
And so I think there's aspects of that that can be enhanced and enabled with the Web3 technologies that actually are additive to the gameplay, and, and I think that's exciting to me.
- BRBlake Robbins
What- what's an example?
- MLMitch Lasky
I'm not gonna tell you. [laughing]
- 1:57:11 – 2:15:41
AI in games: practical near-term wins (art pipeline, QA/balancing, live ops, D&D-style DMing)
- BGBen Gilbert
Well, a way that we wanted to kind of bring this episode home is you guys recorded Gamecraft in full before getting any input from the outside world. Acquired basically only ever has one episode in the can, and so when we release it, we get feedback, we incorporate it into the next episode. Y- I'm sure you've gotten a flood of feedback since releasing the whole series. Is there any sort of mailbag or things people have, uh, have brought up where you might wanna address things from the series?
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, broadly, it was a bit scary, right? Because we did release eight episodes pretty much just sort of back to back to back, and we... As you said, we- they were all in the can when we f- recorded basically the first episode, and or when we released the first episode. And, um, I've just been incredibly, uh, surprised by how universally, um, positive the feedback has been. I think there really wasn't much like it on the market in terms of-
- BGBen Gilbert
Not at all
- MLMitch Lasky
... uh, like, deeply researched, very much, I think, inspired by what you guys have, have demonstrated is, is that, you know, there is an audience for this kind of well-prepared, um, intellectually rigorous kind of exploration of, of a niche-y industry that most people wouldn't consider interesting, but you can make interesting, and I think that was partly our goal when we started, and so we did gain- have some inspiration from... I mean, I think if, if you guys hadn't existed, we probably wouldn't have done it. [chuckles] Um-
- BGBen Gilbert
Thank you.
- MLMitch Lasky
But, uh, yeah, we've gotten-
- BGBen Gilbert
Sounds like Malcolm Gladwell helped a little bit. [laughing]
- BGBen Gilbert
[laughing]
- MLMitch Lasky
He just, he, he just told me not to write a book, which I think-
- BGBen Gilbert
[chuckles]
- MLMitch Lasky
... uh, you know, he's been on that, that for a while, that, like, that, that podcasts are the future. I think he, he's done a couple episodes with Bill Simmons, who, you know, calls himself the Podfather, and, uh-
- BGBen Gilbert
He is
- MLMitch Lasky
... he-
- BGBen Gilbert
It's true, though, like, we, we've thought- we've been asked many times, we've thought about writing a book many times on... It never pencils. Like, it's never a good decision.
- MLMitch Lasky
No.
- BGBen Gilbert
Which is kind of sad, but it's just the reality today.
- MLMitch Lasky
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah, it, it, it's... I would- I'd just echo what Mitch has said, which is the feedback has just been amazing. It's... The most common feedback or, you know, the mailbag stuff is just, "You, you lead us right to the current time," uh, and they're like: "We want you to talk about all the-"
- MLMitch Lasky
What's happening now?
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah, yeah. [laughing]
- MLMitch Lasky
What about AI in games?
- BGBen Gilbert
Exactly.
- MLMitch Lasky
So let's talk about that, right?
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah, yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
'Cause we have gotten that as a question.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah.
- BGBen Gilbert
Yeah.
- MLMitch Lasky
So this is a brave new world, right? And, and I think one of the things that's kind of fun about AI in games is that we've had AI in games, right? Like, this is-
- BGBen Gilbert
AI started in games. [chuckles]
Episode duration: 2:15:41
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