Arbitrage Media

Brian: 00:00:01

the

Brian: 00:00:01

message from Troy?

Brian: 00:00:02

He's at, he's at advanced tennis camp.

Brian: 00:00:05

advanced.

Brian: 00:00:06

He wanted to make sure that we knew that he was not just at tennis camp, but that he was at advanced

Alex: 00:00:10

It says advanced aged tennis camp, maybe.

Brian: 00:00:13

it's a cry for how anytime a middle aged man starts to like greatly improve at a sport, something's wrong.

Brian: 00:00:22

This is a season of decline for that.

Alex: 00:00:24

yeah, you should be slowing down.

Alex: 00:00:26

I mean, he seems to, just as he's doing that, he seems to be requesting more and more from, from all of us.

Alex: 00:00:32

And, he's excited about the podcast, and his little empire.

Alex: 00:00:36

but here we are working while he's, at tennis camp,

Brian: 00:00:38

that's okay.

Brian: 00:00:39

This is, I do this, this is a passion,

Brian: 00:01:04

I'm at a newsletter, marketing conference right now in Austin, Texas.

Brian: 00:01:09

And,

Alex: 00:01:09

I mean, it's pretty much like tennis camp then.

Brian: 00:01:12

this is like tennis camp.

Brian: 00:01:13

It's really fascinating to me because, you know, with, with how

Brian: 00:01:17

the information ecosystem has changed quite a bit, that there is this.

Brian: 00:01:22

There's an entirely different worlds that like, do not let that do not actually intersect.

Brian: 00:01:28

Like the people here are mostly, I don't mean this in a bad way.

Brian: 00:01:32

They're like information entrepreneurs.

Brian: 00:01:35

the information, the content is not where they start.

Brian: 00:01:37

It's like they are entrepreneurs and content just happens to be the

Brian: 00:01:41

product that, that they're using, in their entrepreneurial activities.

Alex: 00:01:45

Right.

Alex: 00:01:45

It's just like a resource.

Alex: 00:01:46

it's, it's a resource that they use to, to build a business around,

Brian: 00:01:51

Yeah, you know what it reminds me of, it reminds me of DTC companies

Alex: 00:01:56

Yeah.

Brian: 00:01:57

when I started, like, you know, we started covering DTC companies at, at my old company, we had this,

Brian: 00:02:02

publication that, that was in the fashion and beauty, and then another one in retail, and it focused on DTCA lot.

Brian: 00:02:07

And the more I was like getting into them, I was like, these aren't product companies.

Brian: 00:02:12

They're marketing like, and they would always come out of hb, out of Harvard Business School and you

Brian: 00:02:18

know, all of a sudden they were like, oh, we're solving a problem.

Brian: 00:02:21

But their core of what they did was not actually the product.

Brian: 00:02:25

Everyone got the products from the same supply chains.

Brian: 00:02:28

You can get them like made pretty

Alex: 00:02:30

I mean, I have a confession to make.

Alex: 00:02:32

And then I think for the longest time I really looked down on people like that because they did.

Alex: 00:02:37

I come from the creative and production side.

Alex: 00:02:40

So when I see people just, Just like manning the ship around that stuff and not carrying what cargo is being carried.

Alex: 00:02:46

You know, they're essentially like, oh, we just take this ship from here to here and we sell it off.

Alex: 00:02:49

I don't care if it's like pork loins or orange juice or whatever.

Alex: 00:02:53

Right.

Alex: 00:02:54

and I always, I I, I had a lot of trouble connecting with people that, that thought

Alex: 00:02:58

about that, because for me it's always been about like, what are you making?

Alex: 00:03:03

That's the thing, you know, everything

Brian: 00:03:05

Yes.

Brian: 00:03:05

Well, that's the same for me on the content side, right?

Brian: 00:03:07

Because I was like, wait a second, like you're 19.

Brian: 00:03:11

You built like an AI newsletter that you flipped.

Brian: 00:03:14

Like I, I've been doing this, my whole life and like, you don't like,

Brian: 00:03:18

so, but it's interesting because you can do that, but a lot of.

Brian: 00:03:21

I mean, that's the, a lot of the economy really,

Alex: 00:03:24

It, it is.

Alex: 00:03:25

And I don't think everybody, I don't know.

Alex: 00:03:27

I mean, I'm conflicted about it.

Alex: 00:03:28

I don't think everybody has to, care so deeply about it that it, it overtakes their lives.

Alex: 00:03:33

And I think people are allowed to care about whatever they want to care.

Alex: 00:03:36

But I think it, you know, we've had it, was it this week with.

Alex: 00:03:39

Amazon acquiring the creative, you know, gaining creative control over James Bond.

Alex: 00:03:44

Right.

Alex: 00:03:44

And, and how people are worried about that.

Alex: 00:03:47

One of the last franchises that hasn't been, you know, kind of turned into a content machine, like, like Star Wars

Alex: 00:03:53

and, and some of the stuff that's been coming out of that is, is how Amazon executive, or some Amazon executive

Alex: 00:03:59

called like really pissed the, James Bond team off by calling it content.

Alex: 00:04:04

You know, that's just like, oh, it's content.

Alex: 00:04:06

She's like, I don't care.

Alex: 00:04:08

yeah, that's always gonna be a tension for me.

Alex: 00:04:10

And it's, it's interesting.

Alex: 00:04:12

but when, when it comes back to newsletter, one thing I was curious about, are those folks over there,

Alex: 00:04:16

like, are they worried about AI because we're, we're this close to having.

Alex: 00:04:20

The inbox turned into something that just trumps up all your, I mean, you know, my, my Google, even Gemini is kind of trans,

Alex: 00:04:28

you know, transcribing stuff for me and, and simplifying it and pushing stuff out.

Brian: 00:04:33

I like, by the way, I like the apple and I'll answer that, but I, I want to get at Apple Intelligence a little bit.

Brian: 00:04:38

Like, do you use, like their summations of text messages are like so hilariously awful.

Brian: 00:04:45

Like they're

Alex: 00:04:46

Yeah.

Brian: 00:04:46

completely wrong.

Brian: 00:04:47

I.

Alex: 00:04:47

Yeah.

Alex: 00:04:48

Yeah.

Brian: 00:04:49

Take this product back, like stop it.

Brian: 00:04:52

dig Steve Jobs outta the earth.

Brian: 00:04:54

He was probably

Brian: 00:04:55

cremated.

Brian: 00:04:55

He seems He's cremation guy, right.

Brian: 00:04:58

But like, I dunno, reconstitute him somehow because like he has to put a stop to

Alex: 00:05:03

So, so I'm an early adopter.

Alex: 00:05:05

I always like, I'm using beta software and, and stuff like that.

Alex: 00:05:08

And, and this time was no different.

Alex: 00:05:10

but it's, it is the first Apple feature I turned off.

Alex: 00:05:14

Your phone works much better.

Alex: 00:05:16

You can turn it off, you can go into Apple Intelligence and just turn

Alex: 00:05:18

all that stuff off and it's just like, it's made so much of it worse.

Alex: 00:05:23

And, and, and,

Brian: 00:05:24

It's hilarious.

Brian: 00:05:24

It's so hilariously bad that I actually enjoy it.

Brian: 00:05:27

It's like a hate listen.

Brian: 00:05:28

It's like, you know, it's like all in for me, like, you know.

Alex: 00:05:31

Yeah.

Alex: 00:05:31

And, and the thing is, I do a lot of driving and, and, you know, I have my text kind of being read out to me.

Alex: 00:05:36

Texting is actually a good way for me to go back and forth when I'm driving.

Alex: 00:05:40

and it will go, it'll, it'll read the summarized one.

Alex: 00:05:43

It'll go like, you know, summarized from your wife, you know, cat threw up, TV not working.

Alex: 00:05:49

And I'm like, that makes no sense.

Alex: 00:05:50

What, you know, like,

Brian: 00:05:52

So anyway, so the AI there, there, so is there concern about ai, you know, not, not really among this crowd exactly.

Brian: 00:06:01

Although it was funny, they had one, like, you know, they have vendor pitches at at events, and the vendor.

Brian: 00:06:07

I won't name it.

Brian: 00:06:08

I mean, whatever, it doesn't really matter.

Brian: 00:06:09

But like, they're basically, it's like you can get CPA under a dollar for like newsletter, subscribers.

Brian: 00:06:16

They have this network of emails that they, a ai generate emails

Brian: 00:06:22

and then will like basically promote your newsletter in there.

Brian: 00:06:26

And I think one of the interesting aspects of this newsletter world is, I say this with, with a lot of love and respect.

Alex: 00:06:34

I know you always seem to be like, uh,

Brian: 00:06:37

Well, I don't wanna be, I don't wanna go to the cocktails and, well, this won't come out until tomorrow.

Brian: 00:06:41

I get like, set

Alex: 00:06:42

with total respect for the cigarette industry, I would like

Brian: 00:06:46

it's like when someone says not to be racist, but you know, they're gonna say something racist.

Brian: 00:06:50

no, with, with this, it's like there's a lot of multi-level marketing vibes in the newsletter world.

Alex: 00:06:56

Oh, you don't

Brian: 00:06:57

For instance, there's, there's, there's 3000 AI newsletters, not AI

Brian: 00:07:02

generated, but newsletters about AI on one email platform that's just on bi.

Brian: 00:07:08

Like we don't know how many there truly are.

Brian: 00:07:10

we might need Doge to like be pointed at, at the, at the email newsletter world,

Alex: 00:07:15

many of those are written with ai, you know?

Brian: 00:07:18

Well, that's the thing.

Brian: 00:07:18

It's like, again, with this information entrepreneur, space is how I'm trying to like, sort of nicely brand it, right?

Brian: 00:07:25

Like it's kind of irrelevant, you know?

Brian: 00:07:27

This is like part and parcel.

Brian: 00:07:29

You ask me of a lot of people look for, to me it's adjacent to fire.

Brian: 00:07:34

The financially independent, retire early sort of movement.

Brian: 00:07:37

A lot of passive income world, you know, have a holding company.

Brian: 00:07:42

Own a, a bunch of storage units or venue machines or whatever.

Brian: 00:07:47

there's definitely that, that, there's definitely a tinge of that there.

Alex: 00:07:50

the thing is, I mean, I, I wonder though, like, you know, it, it, it the same race as always, right?

Alex: 00:07:56

Like people.

Alex: 00:07:58

Get entrepreneurial in any space and they want to create more surface area, right?

Alex: 00:08:02

Like in, in, in your, in this case, like, okay, let's get CPMs below a dollar and just, you know, content creation is

Brian: 00:08:09

P-A-C-P-A, man.

Brian: 00:08:11

They're, we're, we're just like, they're delivering you customers, for, for under a dollar.

Alex: 00:08:15

Yeah.

Alex: 00:08:16

So, wow.

Alex: 00:08:16

Okay.

Alex: 00:08:17

and so as like the surface area becomes bigger, then what happens is that the consumer of these

Alex: 00:08:21

things, like starts to, require product that fence that off, right?

Alex: 00:08:26

Like that the mess of your inbox, you know, is going to just become, just

Brian: 00:08:31

is the story of media, right?

Brian: 00:08:32

Like I always compare it to like a children's soccer game, at least an American children's soccer game.

Brian: 00:08:36

I'm sure in Europe their children are way more sophisticated when it comes to football.

Brian: 00:08:40

but you know, a children's soccer game here, it's just like the ball goes to one part of the field or pitch.

Brian: 00:08:45

I wanna be sensitive to

Alex: 00:08:46

Mm-hmm.

Alex: 00:08:47

Thank you.

Brian: 00:08:48

And a clump of a clump of kids just follows around the ball.

Brian: 00:08:51

And the ball moved to newsletters a few years back, and so the whole clump went following, following along with them.

Brian: 00:08:58

And yeah, like I, I worry about that like, with, you know, the fact that this happens

Brian: 00:09:05

all the time in media where everyone piles in creates an untenable situation.

Brian: 00:09:10

And then technology companies, you know, come in, it's like daddy's home and they shut it down.

Alex: 00:09:16

Yeah.

Alex: 00:09:16

Yeah.

Alex: 00:09:17

Or they or they sell you a product to finally make it work.

Alex: 00:09:19

You know?

Alex: 00:09:20

I think

Brian: 00:09:21

Or they shut it down and then they sell.

Brian: 00:09:23

They sell like a version of

Alex: 00:09:24

Oh, their, their own version.

Alex: 00:09:25

Yeah.

Alex: 00:09:25

Yeah.

Alex: 00:09:26

I, yeah, I mean it, but it's the, it is it is the thing with media and what happens is you want to increase your surface area.

Alex: 00:09:33

So in newspapers, at some point you started seeing these newspaper with all these, you know, Sunday

Alex: 00:09:38

edition and sports specials and whatever added into the newspaper.

Alex: 00:09:42

And the thing looked like a phone book, you know?

Alex: 00:09:44

Because they wanted to sell more ads, right?

Alex: 00:09:46

But there was like a physical constraint to how much you could do there.

Alex: 00:09:49

There was a physical constraint to how many ads you could fit in an hour of television.

Alex: 00:09:53

Here everybody's seeing this as like unlimited skill, scalable, and the

Alex: 00:09:57

only physical constraints is how much people will tolerate, you know?

Alex: 00:10:01

and that always ends to a place where.

Alex: 00:10:03

People no longer tolerate it, and it breaks the medium.

Alex: 00:10:06

I, I think the newsletter Medium is, is, is ready to be broken, which is why like the substack thing of turning

Alex: 00:10:12

itself into a platform and, you know, bypassing email is probably right.

Alex: 00:10:16

You know, even though we don't like it

Brian: 00:10:18

Wait, why do you think it's, it's, it's, right.

Brian: 00:10:21

I mean, 'cause they're, they're, they're pivoting hard into video

Brian: 00:10:23

and they, they want all kinds of, it's, it's well beyond email now.

Alex: 00:10:27

because I think that like right now you're sending, You're sending everything into an uncontrolled inbox, right?

Alex: 00:10:34

Which is essentially like this kind of uncontrolled, assorted feat.

Alex: 00:10:37

So, which, which means, and, and more and more people are going to, you know, fight to, to be in that, in that,

Alex: 00:10:42

in someone's inbox, which means that over time you're gonna have more and

Alex: 00:10:46

more newsletters and more and more kind of things being sent to you.

Alex: 00:10:49

which means you're either going to use tools to reduce them, or,

Alex: 00:10:52

or the actual interface of the inbox is not gonna work anymore.

Alex: 00:10:56

And it is a huge risk for somebody that runs a newsletter business to say like, we're completely dependent to,

Alex: 00:11:02

you know What this entire, industry is doing to try to, you know, load

Alex: 00:11:07

people's inboxes with more and more cheaper and cheaper newsletters.

Alex: 00:11:11

And then it opens up an avenue for a startup or somebody like Google to say, Hey, we got a new

Alex: 00:11:16

button that's called Erase all newsletters, or, here's our AI thing.

Alex: 00:11:20

It matches up all your newsletter and just spits out the things

Alex: 00:11:22

you want and, you know, it's completely unprotected for them.

Alex: 00:11:25

So having people say like, well go to the app and we can control what's in the app.

Alex: 00:11:29

We can build an algorithm, we can surface things that you want, maintain engagement.

Alex: 00:11:33

I don't think it's gonna be smooth sailing for email.

Brian: 00:11:35

Well, it's not smooth sailing for anything.

Brian: 00:11:37

So like honestly, anyone who's been in, maybe not some of these newsletter hustlers, but for those

Brian: 00:11:42

of us who have been on the seas for quite a while, we're used to,

Alex: 00:11:45

Oh yeah, yeah,

Brian: 00:11:46

swells, so it's not a problem.

Brian: 00:11:49

but this is coming to all kinds of media.

Brian: 00:11:51

I wanna talk about, the video game industry.

Brian: 00:11:53

'cause some of our listeners I've gotten like, you're an interesting, exotic, character to, to a lot of our listeners.

Brian: 00:11:59

'cause they don't, they don't quite know.

Brian: 00:12:00

Like, can you explain to those who don't know?

Brian: 00:12:03

What do you do, Alex?

Brian: 00:12:04

What is like, what are, you're building this video game.

Brian: 00:12:06

We've heard about this video game, right?

Brian: 00:12:08

Like, what, what do you do?

Alex: 00:12:12

what did I do?

Alex: 00:12:13

Well, if it was up to Troy, I'd be just managing this podcast.

Alex: 00:12:16

But in my, in

Alex: 00:12:17

my outside of the podcast when I got some time, yeah, I run a, i, I launched a video game studio.

Alex: 00:12:23

We're venture backed.

Alex: 00:12:25

and there'll be some announcement around that, soon.

Alex: 00:12:28

you know, we are, we're, we're building new intellectual property ip, based around video games.

Alex: 00:12:34

The, my thesis is that video games is one of the better ways to launch, new ip, in this era.

Alex: 00:12:40

You know, it's very expensive, to kind of make.

Alex: 00:12:42

To build affinity around IP and stories, you know, in in, in movies or, or things like that.

Alex: 00:12:48

And then, you know, in gaming, we think that there's more opportunity to, change the way.

Alex: 00:12:53

things are built and, the budgets around them and, the tooling and stuff like that.

Alex: 00:12:58

So we think there's a huge opportunity in part because the industry is actually in disarray.

Alex: 00:13:02

Like the industry is actually going through a massive, correction phase.

Alex: 00:13:07

where it grew for, for a decade.

Alex: 00:13:09

It grew, you know, 10% every year.

Alex: 00:13:11

and it grew a lot in, over the pandemic, of course.

Alex: 00:13:14

But also like, it's the, the industries, industries become really wide and like with media, it's become, very

Alex: 00:13:21

complicated and the stories kind of, the story means that, like, right now what we're seeing is like there's, I think

Alex: 00:13:27

there's been like something like 34,000 layoffs across the last, two years.

Alex: 00:13:30

It's not a gigantic industry, so it's hard.

Alex: 00:13:34

You know, and certain places like mobile, there's actually less game releases

Alex: 00:13:38

released and people are downloading less games than they were last year.

Alex: 00:13:41

Which is, which is, which is interesting.

Brian: 00:13:43

Yeah, so I, I had listened to, Peter Kafka had on his this podcast channels and he had on Matthew Ball,

Brian: 00:13:50

who had a very ill-timed book about the Metaverse.

Brian: 00:13:53

But anyway, he was, he is an analyst, in, in this space and was, I had no idea there were fewer people.

Brian: 00:14:00

This is what he was calling.

Brian: 00:14:00

Fewer people are playing.

Brian: 00:14:02

Video games now than pre pandemic.

Brian: 00:14:05

So there's actually fewer games being played, which, you know, a lot of

Brian: 00:14:09

things normalize after the pandemic, but it's not a growth industry anymore.

Brian: 00:14:14

And one of the things that I found, and I'd love your, like dissection of, of the industry, because there's

Brian: 00:14:19

kind of like the, I guess his casual games is like mobile games, right?

Brian: 00:14:23

That's an entire

Brian: 00:14:24

world.

Brian: 00:14:25

And that is losing out to like TikTok, like everything's losing out to TikTok.

Brian: 00:14:30

It

Brian: 00:14:30

seems like, like you only have so much

Alex: 00:14:31

Yeah.

Alex: 00:14:32

yeah.

Alex: 00:14:32

I mean, I think if, you know, we talk about modality on this podcast a lot, and it's just like, it's

Alex: 00:14:37

funny because I was talking to some mobile game people the other day and I said, you are on the toilet.

Alex: 00:14:42

You're commuting or you're waiting for someone in your family to get ready, or something like that, right?

Alex: 00:14:46

There's these, these moments that are like, I have two minutes

Alex: 00:14:50

and I need to just distract myself because it's impossible.

Alex: 00:14:52

Being bored and sitting with your own thoughts.

Alex: 00:14:54

And, it's that type of, time that was, it was really hard.

Alex: 00:14:58

And when you think about it, like, you know, okay, what media covers that?

Alex: 00:15:02

in the past it was really hard.

Alex: 00:15:03

Like, am I gonna sit down and watch the five?

Alex: 00:15:05

Minute YouTube video, it's gonna take me a minute to find it.

Alex: 00:15:07

I'm gonna watch it, know, starting to read an article or getting back into my ebook or whatever.

Alex: 00:15:13

And, and the best kind of like 30 seconds to five minute way to spa spend time is

Alex: 00:15:18

to be something like, you know, like a candy Crush or something like that, right?

Alex: 00:15:22

Like, you could just go in, do something.

Alex: 00:15:24

but TikTok has really stepped in and taken, Of a lot of that time and, it's, it's incredible.

Alex: 00:15:30

Like, you know, I think adults are spending like a hundred million

Alex: 00:15:32

hours, more hours on, daily, on short form video than they were last year.

Alex: 00:15:37

It's like that, that growth is incredible.

Brian: 00:15:39

And that comes from somewhere.

Brian: 00:15:41

Like, it doesn't, it affects everyone,

Alex: 00:15:43

it affects everyone.

Alex: 00:15:44

But, but this, but this is why you need to really, I mean, and this is the kind of the challenge with, with.

Alex: 00:15:49

The, the, the thing with TikTok is that it's eaten the, I have five sec, I have 30 seconds to five minutes

Alex: 00:15:55

time, and it's also eaten to the, I I have two hours, you know what I mean?

Alex: 00:16:00

Because, because it's essentially like, it's an infinite train that you can kind of keep kind of like gobbling, right?

Alex: 00:16:06

And so it's, it's gonna hurt everyone, but it's definitely, definitely very much impacted, mobile gaming.

Alex: 00:16:14

And mobile games.

Alex: 00:16:15

You know, customer acquisition was always hard.

Alex: 00:16:17

There was always a lot of competition.

Alex: 00:16:19

but it's like, it's, it's, it's collapsing now.

Alex: 00:16:21

And, and, and, you know, part of the challenge is that customer acquisition has become more expensive.

Alex: 00:16:25

The apple changes have made that harder.

Alex: 00:16:27

and then on top of that, across all segments, but in mobile specifically, people spend a lot of time, On the

Alex: 00:16:34

same five games that they've been spending a lot of times on for years.

Alex: 00:16:37

Right.

Alex: 00:16:37

Like Candy Crush and all of these like take over a huge amount of like the attention space on the, on those

Brian: 00:16:43

So there, there have been a ton of mobile games, right?

Brian: 00:16:47

Like, and it's, it's fairly, I guess, low cost to develop a mobile game.

Brian: 00:16:51

And one of the things, as you know, like one of my passions outside of this podcast is ad tech.

Brian: 00:16:56

Like, I

Alex: 00:16:56

Yes, I know.

Alex: 00:16:57

Yeah.

Brian: 00:16:59

I love, I

Brian: 00:16:59

love ad

Alex: 00:17:00

a tattoo.

Brian: 00:17:01

I love it.

Brian: 00:17:02

but like the ad tech world, there was always a separate ad tech world.

Brian: 00:17:05

There was like, to me, like the New York ad Tech world, and then there was a West Coast ad tech world that

Brian: 00:17:09

was all about mobile app downloads and like, they're basically this, you

Brian: 00:17:13

know, using a lot of similar, but it was, they're totally different worlds.

Brian: 00:17:16

They're different companies and, you know, app loving.

Brian: 00:17:20

Has become this really fascinating company because hilariously named, so it belongs, in, in ad tech.

Brian: 00:17:27

It's, it's, its stock got, you know, amazing runup in it and it

Brian: 00:17:32

operated in the, in the app download for, it was both in casual games

Brian: 00:17:38

and it was basically, you know, it was, it was.

Brian: 00:17:40

Again, we talk about newsletters.

Brian: 00:17:41

This is why I'm trying to connect them because like, I think they, there might be some similarities to

Brian: 00:17:46

both in that, you know, AppLovin was, was both monetizing, casual games.

Brian: 00:17:51

And then, it was also, it was monetizing them with downloads for other.

Brian: 00:17:55

You know, games,

Brian: 00:17:56

which is interesting.

Brian: 00:17:58

And

Brian: 00:17:58

I don't know if you saw, they had, they had a short, a short report came out on the targeting app 11, which,

Brian: 00:18:04

you know, look, its stock has, is, is unbelievably expensive right now.

Brian: 00:18:08

they, their shares are down 12% because, they found out not that anything sketchy would ever happen in Ad Tech.

Brian: 00:18:15

And I have no idea if this is true, but that perhaps, app Loving was doing some stuff that wasn't totally, above board.

Alex: 00:18:21

the side of video games I'm in, does not look, at, advertising supported

Alex: 00:18:25

video games kindly because I think, you know, video games specifically are.

Alex: 00:18:32

All about setting up systems of, of incentives for a player to do something, which hope hopefully is fun.

Alex: 00:18:39

But when you're incentivized to work around advertising or microtransaction, it means that the games you create like

Alex: 00:18:45

are just meant to psychologically, you know, get you to engage with, with that part of the, of the, of the business more.

Alex: 00:18:52

Right.

Alex: 00:18:53

And, uh.

Brian: 00:18:53

is like arbitrage publishers, right?

Brian: 00:18:55

Like I, I feel, I always felt like in publishing the arb, people were kind of looked at like, oh, come on.

Brian: 00:19:01

Like, you're not starting from, I wanna create, you know, I'm creating content and I'm going to monetize it.

Brian: 00:19:07

You're starting from like.

Brian: 00:19:09

Kind of just trying to hack gear way and you're doing like arb, whether you're doing SEOA everywhere, you're

Brian: 00:19:15

doing social arb, you know, it's ARB and a lot of newsletter is arb.

Brian: 00:19:19

A lot of the people acquire, a lot acquire customers very cheaply through,

Brian: 00:19:24

you know, the per the vendor who's giving the pre-lunch presentation.

Brian: 00:19:27

thank you for the lunch.

Brian: 00:19:28

to, to the vendor.

Brian: 00:19:29

I had a Turkey and provolone.

Brian: 00:19:30

It was, it was fine.

Brian: 00:19:31

But,

Brian: 00:19:32

you know, yeah, it's a good sandwich tops, 10 sandwich.

Brian: 00:19:35

But they, you know, they're doing basic, you know, arbitrage.

Brian: 00:19:37

They're buying low, and then they're, they're selling for a little higher and then rinse

Brian: 00:19:42

and repeat.

Brian: 00:19:42

It seems like a, this end of gaming is a little bit like that.

Alex: 00:19:46

Yeah, it is.

Alex: 00:19:47

I mean, I think a lot of revenue is, is it comes from, microtransactions, right?

Alex: 00:19:53

So that's something it does have, it, it, it has cracked a code around

Alex: 00:19:57

like, around getting people to transact with, with the games, right?

Alex: 00:20:00

I think media, the rest of media wishes it had cracked that code.

Alex: 00:20:04

the challenges are, okay, so you have advertising and kind of.

Alex: 00:20:08

You know, pre, upsells that are happening within the game, all the games are free.

Alex: 00:20:12

the challenge is like, discovery's really, really hard, right?

Alex: 00:20:15

Because the app store is not a great discovery system.

Alex: 00:20:18

So they end up paying like 10 to 15 times the amount, on, on customer acquisition and marketing that they do on the game.

Alex: 00:20:25

So these games, you know, they kind of built really cheap, but they actually spent a lot of money to generate that.

Alex: 00:20:29

And then.

Alex: 00:20:30

You know, games like Monopoly Go and stuff like that are generating billions of dollars a year.

Alex: 00:20:35

but there's maybe a handful, there's maybe 10 that kind of swamp the, play field.

Alex: 00:20:40

And the rest is a lot of like smaller player that get a little bit of attention and that are getting more and

Alex: 00:20:45

more swamped with ads, because they're trying to reach some sort of CPM.

Alex: 00:20:49

so I'm sure that that's having an impact on like just the audiences.

Alex: 00:20:54

I mean, audiences at some point get tired of it.

Alex: 00:20:56

Like, you know, you talk to a lot of people say, I'm sick and tired of trying to play a game.

Alex: 00:21:01

Like when I turn, when you open TikTok, you're in the content, you're enjoying yourself right away.

Alex: 00:21:06

Right.

Alex: 00:21:06

A lot of these games, you turn it on, it loads, you see an ad, you try to play, you see another ad, you know,

Alex: 00:21:13

and there you are, you know, you have to get off the toilet, right?

Alex: 00:21:15

And so it's, it's just, I think, become a, a a, a bad.

Alex: 00:21:19

Product where they've just, it, the zone's been flooded.

Alex: 00:21:23

The economics made very little sense.

Alex: 00:21:25

It became really expensive to make these games the way the algorithms work meant that like, even if you were trying to

Alex: 00:21:30

sell your game for like two bucks, it was probably gonna lose out to a game that's free but packed with ads, right?

Alex: 00:21:37

It, it, it is just, I think it, some of that is that the, the marketplaces have been mismanaged, Which you don't see,

Alex: 00:21:43

alternatively, like the, the PC gaming, is actually a bright spot that's happening.

Alex: 00:21:47

It's still growing.

Alex: 00:21:48

It's growing in China.

Alex: 00:21:50

you think that PC gaming is a kind of a niche, thing, but there's,

Alex: 00:21:52

you know, 300 million PCs sold every year or something like that.

Alex: 00:21:55

And, and that.

Alex: 00:21:57

marketplace, which is also supported by, you know, like buy at once as well as

Alex: 00:22:02

microtransaction is pretty much entirely owned by, by, by something called Steam.

Alex: 00:22:07

which is run by a company called Valve, right?

Alex: 00:22:09

And in that case, what they've managed to do is like, create this

Alex: 00:22:11

incredible ecosystem where they take 20 to 30% of every transaction fee.

Alex: 00:22:17

but they actually are growing.

Alex: 00:22:18

They actually have more, there's more games going to be released on PCs.

Alex: 00:22:21

and part of that I think is just generally, I, I think the, the,

Alex: 00:22:25

the, the quality of the product for consumer has been better.

Alex: 00:22:29

So the, I think the iPhone, the, the mobile video games, I, I just think has been, have been mismanaged to the

Alex: 00:22:35

point of becoming not compelling and just giving all the space to like four or five players who dominate the field.

Alex: 00:22:43

meanwhile, you know, you look at pc, it's a much healthier ecosystem, which is why we're, we're focusing on pc, but

Alex: 00:22:49

like

Brian: 00:22:49

so you're focused on pc.

Brian: 00:22:51

So let, let me ask you this, 'cause I see there's a genre, since you're not on X I'll tell you what's going on there too.

Brian: 00:22:56

it's just like, you're not at the newsletter marketing, conferences either.

Brian: 00:23:00

but on X there's like, there's a genre of, of X posts, tweets, whatever we're calling 'em

Brian: 00:23:05

these days of.

Brian: 00:23:07

It's like, so and so is over, you know?

Brian: 00:23:09

And ai, AI's gonna kill whatever.

Brian: 00:23:11

AI's gonna kill game developers.

Brian: 00:23:13

That's like a,

Brian: 00:23:14

a mini meme.

Brian: 00:23:15

And you know, people refer to, I guess Google had demoed, I guess last August, Google Research had demoed,

Brian: 00:23:22

being able to, I guess they created Doom Gameplay without a, a game engine.

Brian: 00:23:28

And there's a, there's a genre of, of.

Brian: 00:23:32

I guess it's like kind of the equivalent of, maybe I'm forcing this, it's kind of the equivalent of a lot of the newsletter

Brian: 00:23:38

hustlers where there's like hustlers on, there's like developer hustlers

Brian: 00:23:42

on X, like

Brian: 00:23:43

they're trying to build like, you know, there were like one person living in Portugal who like has like

Brian: 00:23:48

a holding company with seven different like apps and things that they've built, and they're like gin up.

Brian: 00:23:54

You know, I guess like video games and if you, you just like search on it and you'll, you'll find, you'll find these

Brian: 00:24:01

people out there that are, You could literally develop a whole game from scratch within a few months using ai.

Brian: 00:24:08

At this point, AI can write the story of your game.

Brian: 00:24:10

AI can generate all the code and features you need.

Brian: 00:24:13

AI can generate UI assets and characters, but you can then turn into three, 3D muscles.

Brian: 00:24:19

I don't even know what muscles, I guess that's models with basically no effort.

Brian: 00:24:22

nobody's copy, nobody's copywriting these tweets

Alex: 00:24:26

yeah.

Alex: 00:24:27

it is the new iteration of the, of the crypto, you know, scene, right?

Alex: 00:24:31

Like, yeah.

Alex: 00:24:32

Yeah.

Alex: 00:24:32

It's a no effort.

Alex: 00:24:33

No effort.

Alex: 00:24:33

Lots of results.

Alex: 00:24:34

look, the, the industry is de, I mean, the thing is AI is really good at, is coding so great, right?

Alex: 00:24:40

Like, you know, it means that like smart people, are going to have more time to, to do other things

Alex: 00:24:45

than, you know, troubleshoot their code or things like that.

Alex: 00:24:47

But, What I find always funny is that a lot of these, kind of like, you know,

Alex: 00:24:55

humanists or whatever you wanna call them who are like, you know, like, you know, fuck you.

Alex: 00:25:00

Everyone that's creative, like, we figured it out.

Alex: 00:25:02

We don't need you anymore.

Alex: 00:25:03

And, you know, they still.

Alex: 00:25:05

By the latest Kendrick album.

Alex: 00:25:07

Like you could generate something with Suno AI that is perfectly terrible

Alex: 00:25:11

and just listen to that and, and, but it's that, it's a mentality.

Alex: 00:25:14

Like, it's funny actually, speaking of Suno ai, I have this quote from the CEO.

Alex: 00:25:18

He said something that is telling, and I think that there's a, a lot of folks that are trying to.

Alex: 00:25:23

Use AI to replace the human creativity, not just labor, but the actual creativity of it.

Alex: 00:25:29

Or like downplaying the, the importance of creativity and taste and

Alex: 00:25:32

everything that we make and, and why, why you need that to, to stand out.

Alex: 00:25:38

And you'll need it more to stand out as more content gets created.

Alex: 00:25:40

But he said, it's the, it's the Suno ai, music tech, that just generates songs, right?

Alex: 00:25:46

Probably built on copyrighted music data.

Alex: 00:25:49

But, you know, let's not get into that.

Alex: 00:25:51

You know, if you mince the meat small enough, you can't tell what animal it's from.

Alex: 00:25:55

He says it's not really enjoyable to make music now.

Alex: 00:25:58

It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice.

Alex: 00:26:00

You need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software.

Alex: 00:26:05

I think the majority of the people don't enjoy the majority of time they spend making music.

Alex: 00:26:09

And it's like,

Brian: 00:26:09

Too much friction.

Brian: 00:26:10

Too much friction in

Alex: 00:26:11

yeah, too much friction

Brian: 00:26:12

Learning how to play guitar.

Alex: 00:26:14

Right, right.

Alex: 00:26:14

And then you find out that like, you know, radio heads creep, like that iconic sound was like a mistake that

Alex: 00:26:20

somebody and somebody heard it and, and that's how you create fucking art man.

Alex: 00:26:24

And so, and so, I, I don't mind the idea of saying like, Hey, these things are going to save us time.

Alex: 00:26:29

We're looking at ways things can save us time.

Alex: 00:26:31

If an animator can can animate three frames instead of 12 and, and we can get support from technology.

Alex: 00:26:38

That's what we do.

Alex: 00:26:38

We work with computers, but there's this glee.

Alex: 00:26:41

They have like this glee, like, where we not, okay, well then you, you know, you can, you can marry your robot wife and

Alex: 00:26:48

listen to your AI generated music and, drink your, you know, whatever, protein powder and just leave us the fuck alone.

Alex: 00:26:56

But,

Brian: 00:26:56

I, I think what it, I think what it is, is like there's always this Venn diagram like of, of like

Brian: 00:27:02

this sort of quote unquote art and then the hustlers, you know, like, and the hustlers tend to tend to be out of the

Brian: 00:27:09

gates, like earliest and they're always, you know, wanting to, to, Basically to replace or to get, do away with

Brian: 00:27:16

the part that they're not necessarily, that's not where their specialty lies.

Brian: 00:27:20

You know, we all, we all rate very highly what, what, what we are good at, right?

Brian: 00:27:26

Like, and if we come, you know, like I, I meet a lot of people here who are, who are way better at understanding

Brian: 00:27:32

like infinitely better than understand growth dynamics and like how to.

Brian: 00:27:36

Buy ads on Facebook and then, you know, convert them at like a, a, a low enough, you know, CAC to make

Brian: 00:27:43

it worthwhile and get the payback periods down and all this stuff.

Brian: 00:27:47

I'm like, wow.

Brian: 00:27:48

I, I would not have time to, to, to write the newsletter.

Brian: 00:27:51

But, you know, I mean, you know, I think in the end it, it's unique to have the blend, a little bit of the blend of

Brian: 00:27:58

both, but everyone comes from somewhere and so you gotta come from one end.

Alex: 00:28:01

I mean, I think the conversation's interesting.

Alex: 00:28:02

Right now.

Alex: 00:28:03

It's, it's like, You know, specifically going back to di thing, part of an issue that I see on the other side is that a

Alex: 00:28:09

lot of people that work in games and in creative fields are completely shutting

Alex: 00:28:12

themselves out from AI saying like, Nope, we're not using it, blah, blah, blah.

Alex: 00:28:16

You know, putting fingers in their ears.

Alex: 00:28:17

It's not happening.

Alex: 00:28:18

You know, that's, that's also wrong.

Alex: 00:28:20

but yeah, it's, it's is just either way I think, the gaming industry, is in for like.

Alex: 00:28:27

An incredible, like next five years that are going to, see it fundamentally change loss of consolidation.

Alex: 00:28:33

But if the audience is interested, do you think you wanna hear some interesting data?

Alex: 00:28:36

Do you wanna mind if I rattle out some, like interesting numbers?

Brian: 00:28:40

Yeah,

Alex: 00:28:40

rattle.

Alex: 00:28:41

Okay.

Alex: 00:28:42

So, so here's the interesting thing.

Alex: 00:28:44

The, the industry is huge, right?

Alex: 00:28:45

So if you look at, Call of Duty, which full disclosure I worked on.

Alex: 00:28:50

it's, it's lifetime revenue is, is estimated $45 billion.

Alex: 00:28:55

45, it exceeds Marvel and all of these things.

Alex: 00:28:57

That's Call of Duty.

Alex: 00:28:59

And every year Call of Duty is the number one game released.

Alex: 00:29:03

except on years when Grand Theft Dollar comes out, which is this year.

Alex: 00:29:06

This year we expect Grand Theft dollar six to come out.

Alex: 00:29:09

It.

Alex: 00:29:09

They, you know, sources are saying they spend anything from

Alex: 00:29:13

one to $3 billion on the game and they'll make it back in a weekend.

Alex: 00:29:16

So, These, these media, you know, if you want to.

Alex: 00:29:20

Consider those media companies, they are insanely huge and a lot of

Alex: 00:29:25

the activity happens on a platform called Steam, which I talked about.

Alex: 00:29:28

Steam is one of the few kind of American owned platforms that's growing in China.

Alex: 00:29:32

70 million Chinese users, 200 million monthly active users, 22 million.

Alex: 00:29:38

you know, like commercial activity happening on the platform.

Alex: 00:29:41

Do you know how big Valve is

Brian: 00:29:43

No,

Alex: 00:29:44

300

Brian: 00:29:45

I just learned it existed.

Alex: 00:29:46

Right.

Alex: 00:29:47

Okay.

Alex: 00:29:47

Three, 300 people work at Valve.

Alex: 00:29:50

All right.

Alex: 00:29:50

300 people work at Valve.

Alex: 00:29:52

and you would say, wow, that's crazy.

Alex: 00:29:53

No, 350 people work at Valve and they generate $22 billion, in their ecosystem.

Alex: 00:29:59

but that's not all.

Alex: 00:30:00

Out of those 350 people, actually 250 people work on hardware that has nothing to do with the marketplace.

Alex: 00:30:05

So a hundred people, work on that.

Alex: 00:30:08

And so, so like the bunch of revenue per employee is crazy.

Alex: 00:30:11

It's, it's privately owned.

Alex: 00:30:13

and it is probably the me biggest like media platform.

Alex: 00:30:16

In the world, like, you know, it's insane.

Alex: 00:30:19

and so, and so, it's, it's crazy.

Alex: 00:30:21

And on this platform, you have a space called the independent or indie space.

Alex: 00:30:26

and, we've seen, you know, games by teams of five to 20 people.

Alex: 00:30:31

they called less than $5 million generate over a hundred million dollars in revenue.

Brian: 00:30:35

Okay, so that's kind of similar.

Brian: 00:30:36

I mean that, well, the numbers are just like bigger, it seems like in

Alex: 00:30:39

Yeah.

Alex: 00:30:39

I mean, if, if, if, if, if you, if I mean, look, the, the numbers are bigger.

Alex: 00:30:43

The mode is actually much higher.

Alex: 00:30:45

Video games, no matter what anybody says, that you can prompt it and you can poop something out.

Alex: 00:30:49

Video games are incredibly difficult to make and take anything from like 18 months to 10 years to complete.

Alex: 00:30:55

Right.

Alex: 00:30:55

They're very, they're very difficult.

Alex: 00:30:57

A lot of time you're, you're, you're releasing a cultural product.

Alex: 00:31:00

You know, that's five years away and you don't know where the

Alex: 00:31:02

audience is gonna be there or not by the time you're out with it.

Alex: 00:31:05

So it is a high risk, you know, a

Brian: 00:31:06

So when is your, when is this game?

Brian: 00:31:08

Can, can we say what it's about?

Brian: 00:31:10

Like what

Alex: 00:31:11

No, I mean, we're not announcing it yet.

Alex: 00:31:13

We're gonna, we're gonna announce, some stuff about our, our venture backing and the plans for the studio later this year.

Alex: 00:31:20

and the reason I'm not announcing it is because, it is really important to, keep some sort of, exclusivity

Alex: 00:31:27

potential in case like one of the big, you know, video games actually has a pretty active, events.

Alex: 00:31:33

Kind of business going around it.

Alex: 00:31:34

There's the Game Awards and, and

Brian: 00:31:35

Shit.

Brian: 00:31:36

I thought you were gonna say espionage.

Brian: 00:31:37

I was like, oh, this is gonna get exciting.

Alex: 00:31:39

no, it's not.

Alex: 00:31:40

It's less about that actually.

Alex: 00:31:41

You'd be surprised.

Alex: 00:31:42

People are incredibly open talking about things.

Alex: 00:31:44

I think the currency is being able to announce a premiere.

Alex: 00:31:47

So unlike movies, like people get excited for trailers and new games coming out, so, so the Game Awards,

Alex: 00:31:54

for example, which is the video game, Oscars, is 60% game announcements.

Alex: 00:32:00

It actually makes the show way better.

Alex: 00:32:01

Imagine.

Alex: 00:32:02

Imagine if you were watching the Oscars and they interrupted it for

Alex: 00:32:05

like a world premiere of like Top Gun Maverick two coming this summer.

Alex: 00:32:09

You know, like it would be

Brian: 00:32:10

Wait, are those, are those paid?

Brian: 00:32:11

Do they monetize

Alex: 00:32:12

oh, uh, they are sometimes if the game is, a hot enough

Alex: 00:32:18

property, they will, they will give the, you know, they will kind of.

Alex: 00:32:21

You know, work around those things.

Alex: 00:32:22

But, I think the game awards that was going a spot was going for a hundred thousand dollars.

Alex: 00:32:26

So it's not Super Bowl, but it's, you know, it's, it's, it's not bad.

Alex: 00:32:30

it's kind of a big deal.

Alex: 00:32:31

But, so, so like,

Brian: 00:32:32

Oh my God.

Brian: 00:32:32

It's, it's, it's, it's started and owned by a journalist.

Brian: 00:32:36

Good for him.

Brian: 00:32:37

See kids.

Brian: 00:32:39

You go into journalism.

Alex: 00:32:40

Jeff Keeley.

Alex: 00:32:41

he's like, he's kind of an in, in an, an incredible success story.

Alex: 00:32:45

He's done, he's done a lot for the, for the industry.

Alex: 00:32:47

And the game award is like a big deal now, you know?

Alex: 00:32:50

So, Lots of things are changing.

Alex: 00:32:52

industry's definitely not dying.

Alex: 00:32:54

I mean, you know, call of Duty is still making billions of dollars.

Alex: 00:32:58

This year's Call of Duty made billions of dollars.

Alex: 00:33:00

steam, valve steam is profitable.

Alex: 00:33:02

I think they're like, what is it, like 60 to $70 million per employee they're making.

Alex: 00:33:07

but we're fighting in the attention eco economy.

Alex: 00:33:09

And so, you know, distribution is still hard.

Alex: 00:33:12

As with every product, marketing is hard, you know, and, and

Brian: 00:33:16

don't think, you don't think, gay is becoming less like culturally,

Brian: 00:33:21

I don't wanna say relevant, but like that it's not losing steam.

Brian: 00:33:25

Like, because it was on like a tremendous, I. Steam, so to speak.

Brian: 00:33:29

It, it was on a tremendous run.

Brian: 00:33:31

Right.

Brian: 00:33:31

And like we've discussed it on the podcast, there's a lot of people in the, the, the, the overall media world

Brian: 00:33:37

who have long been like, yeah, I know, I know video games are massive and stuff like this, but at the same time,

Brian: 00:33:43

like, you know, most of the people don't, don't, aren't gamers themselves.

Brian: 00:33:47

They don't know adults who play games all the time or, or

Alex: 00:33:50

It, it, it's a correction, right?

Alex: 00:33:52

I mean, like I said, it's, it's such a big umbrella.

Alex: 00:33:55

the, so, so what's happening, it's a correction and, and a maturation and like post covid, uh.

Alex: 00:34:00

Adjustment.

Alex: 00:34:01

Right?

Alex: 00:34:01

So, you know, some, some more interesting data, like what's happening right now is that the top five franchises

Alex: 00:34:09

on console capture, like, you know, 40 to 45% of all playtime, right?

Alex: 00:34:15

and, you know, so if you take that and, and TikTok and all of these

Alex: 00:34:18

things, like actually only 6.5% of people's attention is left to go to.

Alex: 00:34:23

Genuinely new games today, right?

Alex: 00:34:26

So a lot of it is like, it's being very successful, but there's not a lot of turnover.

Alex: 00:34:31

You know, games like you have, you have World of Warcraft, Fortnite, et cetera.

Alex: 00:34:34

These are games that are 10, 15, 25 years old, right?

Alex: 00:34:38

Minecraft, right?

Brian: 00:34:40

What was the last like, massive, like, like console game, like hit like, or PC game,

Brian: 00:34:45

like massive,

Brian: 00:34:46

not, not like a franchise, not like

Alex: 00:34:48

It's hard to tell, right?

Alex: 00:34:49

Like, the latest massive hit.

Alex: 00:34:52

it's actually a great question.

Alex: 00:34:53

I mean, Nintendo is very successful, right?

Alex: 00:34:56

So if you want to go into that thing, Nintendo has sold like more copies of supermarket art than anything else.

Alex: 00:35:02

It's doing really well.

Alex: 00:35:03

on the pc, there have been, hits that are like.

Alex: 00:35:07

You know, a few years old, like Valant, from the guys who did, league of Legends.

Alex: 00:35:11

these types of games are, are big, big hits, or AP Apex Legends or, the finals.

Alex: 00:35:17

but there, the, the, the majority of the time is still taken up by games that are.

Alex: 00:35:20

Are pretty old at this stage because they've just been optimized to hack like Fortnite and Roblox and Minecraft.

Alex: 00:35:27

it's kind of intense.

Alex: 00:35:29

yeah, I mean, it's, it's going to be interesting, right?

Alex: 00:35:31

Like, what I want to do is like, you know, we're gonna do games under $10 million in budget.

Alex: 00:35:36

Hopefully our first game is like under 1 million, probably.

Alex: 00:35:39

and try to make things that, you know, sell, like, you know, the problem is the industry spends money.

Alex: 00:35:45

Players feel, you know, like they've got a lot of games and they spend 90% plus of their time on existing, franchises.

Alex: 00:35:53

So we're trying to kind of break out of that a little bit.

Brian: 00:35:55

Is that the risk averse?

Brian: 00:35:57

Nature because I mean like Hollywood went there because it's just, it's, it's

Brian: 00:36:01

when you spend a lot of money to make a movie, you, you don't want water world.

Brian: 00:36:05

So like

Brian: 00:36:05

why not just do another Indiana Jones?

Brian: 00:36:07

I mean, how old is Harrison Ford now?

Brian: 00:36:09

90. It's fine.

Brian: 00:36:10

He can still run.

Alex: 00:36:11

It's different to movies, right?

Alex: 00:36:12

Because these things are turning into platforms.

Alex: 00:36:14

So, so like Call of Duty came out with this mode called War Zone, which is where

Alex: 00:36:19

a lot of people spend time and it's not a version that you need to buy every year.

Alex: 00:36:23

It's just ongoing.

Alex: 00:36:25

Grand Theft Auto has made most of its money from Grand Theft Auto online, where you.

Alex: 00:36:29

This now, I don't know, like eight, 9-year-old game is still generating billions of dollars.

Alex: 00:36:34

So, so unlike a move, like imagine if you didn't yet imagine if you made a

Alex: 00:36:38

movie and if the movie's successful, you could turn it into a platform, right?

Alex: 00:36:42

That's what video game allows you to do, which is, which is pretty unique, right?

Alex: 00:36:47

and so.

Alex: 00:36:49

It's, it's kind of become that.

Alex: 00:36:50

But, and this is why actually a lot of studios were chasing, chasing those big hits, like what they call live service

Alex: 00:36:57

games, which is, you know, games that are constantly running where people go in and spend money and they spent

Alex: 00:37:03

billions and billions of dollars and few of them managed to break through.

Alex: 00:37:06

So there's a lot of pullback in those investments now, because people are basically seeing, seeing that, you know.

Alex: 00:37:12

They're kings of the hill right now.

Alex: 00:37:14

They, they're very hard to dislodge.

Alex: 00:37:15

We're gonna focus on other things.

Brian: 00:37:17

Okay.

Brian: 00:37:17

So final thing, 'cause I know you have a hard stop, which is our, our spinoff podcast that we're gonna eventually make.

Brian: 00:37:23

we got some, we have some, some fan mail.

Brian: 00:37:26

I wanted to, to run by you.

Alex: 00:37:28

Oh great.

Brian: 00:37:28

For commentary, because you're involved in it.

Alex: 00:37:32

Oh boy.

Brian: 00:37:33

it says The rebooting show on people versus algorithms are the only podcast I'm currently listening to.

Brian: 00:37:37

PVA is like the Duke, the priest and the jester.

Brian: 00:37:41

Brian, Troy, Alex respectively.

Alex: 00:37:44

jester.

Brian: 00:37:45

In a room together trying to make sense of this moment in history.

Brian: 00:37:48

The three of you have reached a kind of peak moment, I think, and you are really putting out amazing stuff.

Brian: 00:37:54

In the last few months, there has been more letting each other finish their thoughts.

Brian: 00:37:58

All of you are essential voices in the podcast at this point, and it goes on with some very nice things.

Brian: 00:38:02

But let's go back to the, the Duke, the priest.

Brian: 00:38:05

And the gesture, because I read that, you know, and then I'm, I'm mentally, I'm mentally skipping

Brian: 00:38:09

forward and I was, I was ready, I was ready to be tagged as the gesture.

Brian: 00:38:14

Like you, you know, you have

Alex: 00:38:16

Yeah.

Alex: 00:38:16

I

Brian: 00:38:17

you and Troy are very impressed with, so I'm like, look, I just wanna fit

Brian: 00:38:19

in.

Brian: 00:38:20

But then you, you were the je Where was I?

Brian: 00:38:23

The Duke?

Alex: 00:38:24

I mean to Duke, what does that mean

Brian: 00:38:26

I don't know.

Brian: 00:38:26

I'll take it.

Brian: 00:38:27

I'll take it.

Alex: 00:38:27

I mean, it puts like, you know, nobility, the priest.

Alex: 00:38:31

Yeah.

Alex: 00:38:31

I mean, Troy being the priest makes sense.

Alex: 00:38:33

You know, he's just constantly pontificating

Alex: 00:38:38

jester.

Alex: 00:38:39

Sure.

Alex: 00:38:39

I mean, honestly, like, what the audience should know is that I know very little about.

Alex: 00:38:43

What's being talked about sometimes, you know, and, if you see a lot of conversation on our little WhatsApp

Alex: 00:38:48

group where Troy and Brian are talking, they'll mention names and they're like, who the hell is that?

Alex: 00:38:52

And they go, well, that's the owner of like the largest media group in Germany.

Alex: 00:38:56

And I'm like, I, I don't know.

Alex: 00:38:58

So I do come across like a clown I think, much of the time because this is not my, my environment,

Alex: 00:39:04

but I

Brian: 00:39:04

I wanted to talk about video games today.

Brian: 00:39:06

I wanted

Alex: 00:39:06

thank you.

Brian: 00:39:07

this, this, this, gesture

Brian: 00:39:09

slur.

Brian: 00:39:10

I, I have a very quick, good product.

Brian: 00:39:14

I'm in an area of Austin I've never been before.

Brian: 00:39:16

It's, I think it's pronounced Mueller, like Mueller Park, the, it was where the old airport was.

Brian: 00:39:21

out here, there, the airport.

Brian: 00:39:24

It was the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport and they redeveloped this thing.

Brian: 00:39:28

It's a 700 acre community and it's like a planned community.

Brian: 00:39:33

It's like that sunshine, whatever, sunshine celebration Florida like.

Brian: 00:39:37

And I think we need to build more of these things.

Brian: 00:39:40

It's not necessarily to my taste.

Brian: 00:39:42

They're very, it's very clean.

Brian: 00:39:44

It's very nice.

Brian: 00:39:46

There's like mixed use.

Brian: 00:39:47

There's enough restaurants.

Brian: 00:39:49

you have like.

Brian: 00:39:50

Semi high density like condos, but then you can like graduate into like single family homes.

Brian: 00:39:57

There's like, there's a school and it's all like brand new and spotless and I think we, I think we

Brian: 00:40:03

probably need to build many more of these, these Mueller redevelopments.

Alex: 00:40:08

oh man.

Alex: 00:40:09

I'm so conflicted about that.

Alex: 00:40:10

I think they, they built, they did something like that in San Francisco

Alex: 00:40:13

on, on, on something they called China Basin, and it was built on a landfill.

Alex: 00:40:18

And, and for the longest time I kind of started seeing all these modern buildings.

Alex: 00:40:23

Going up and you know, that's where they have the basketball stadium and stuff like that.

Alex: 00:40:26

And it was all planned.

Alex: 00:40:27

It all felt like it was coming up at the same time.

Alex: 00:40:30

And San Francisco is kind of this, you know, city with a lot of vibe and character and it felt out of place.

Alex: 00:40:36

But over time, you know, I've seen families move there and it's nice and there's a park and people

Brian: 00:40:41

There's a lot of parks.

Brian: 00:40:42

It's very dog friendly.

Brian: 00:40:44

It, and it, it has, it's all very planned.

Brian: 00:40:47

I think the part that's sort of, having lived in New York City for a long time, I sort of, I'm, I'm

Brian: 00:40:52

used to how, like crazy and chaotic and just like slapped together.

Brian: 00:40:56

'cause New York is the most analog city I can think of.

Brian: 00:40:59

Like in.

Alex: 00:41:00

But it's the best city for that.

Alex: 00:41:02

Like I think it's the best city in the

Brian: 00:41:04

Right.

Brian: 00:41:04

So that's why coming here, I'm like, this is very Truman show, and it's a little antiseptic.

Brian: 00:41:09

but at the same time, you know, we need housing and I think we need more of

Alex: 00:41:12

I mean, that's the thing.

Alex: 00:41:13

We need housing.

Alex: 00:41:14

I mean, it's easy to just like, you know,

Alex: 00:41:16

But yeah.

Alex: 00:41:16

All right.

Alex: 00:41:17

Well thanks.

Alex: 00:41:18

I hope this was useful.

Alex: 00:41:19

I have, I can talk about video games for a long time,

Brian: 00:41:22

I know, but you have to go.

Brian: 00:41:22

You, you have to go make one.

Alex: 00:41:24

Oh, it's so much work, man.

Alex: 00:41:25

It's so much

Brian: 00:41:26

But if people are interested, what are they gonna do?

Alex: 00:41:28

well just to.

Alex: 00:41:29

Folks know, I think if you're interested of getting into video games or buying

Alex: 00:41:33

video games for your kids, I think there's two things that you can buy right now.

Alex: 00:41:36

The one is called the Steam Deck.

Alex: 00:41:37

It's a little portable device.

Alex: 00:41:38

You can plug it into your tv and it connects to Steam that, that platform we've talked about.

Alex: 00:41:43

So this means I have game that I now games that I downloaded 20 years ago, that I paid for 20 years ago on my steam deck.

Alex: 00:41:50

Because, because it, it, it maintain, there's no other subscription or there no other service that I, that, that I'm.

Alex: 00:41:56

That I've maintained that has like, you know, been able to, to provide that for me.

Alex: 00:42:00

That's one thing.

Alex: 00:42:01

It's essentially a little PC that you can carry around.

Alex: 00:42:03

The second one is of course, the Nintendo Switch.

Alex: 00:42:05

It's the one thing that we've been recommending anybody buy, if you're interested in video

Alex: 00:42:09

games, Nintendo makes great video games, everybody can enjoy them.

Alex: 00:42:12

but they just announced the the Switch two.

Alex: 00:42:14

So I would hold off on that.

Alex: 00:42:16

The switch two is going to be, this year is going to be big because it's likely that the.

Alex: 00:42:21

Nintendo Switch two as well as Grand Theft Auto are both landing and it's

Alex: 00:42:27

essentially like a thermonuclear bomb in a farmer's market.

Brian: 00:42:30

But Nintendo switched too.

Brian: 00:42:32

They, they're like cheaper than like Xbox and like PlayStation, right?

Alex: 00:42:35

yeah, they're cheap.

Alex: 00:42:36

I mean, I think that's the thing.

Alex: 00:42:37

They basically, we reused old Android mid-range Android hardware

Alex: 00:42:42

that they just shoved into a thing and they got it to do, do a lot.

Alex: 00:42:46

So

Brian: 00:42:47

Well, the Xbox became, I mean, they were trying to, like, the Xbox could do everything.

Brian: 00:42:50

They were like, you, you can like, you know, reheat your pizza in

Alex: 00:42:53

Yeah, that was a big mistake.

Alex: 00:42:54

They, they, they lost focus, and I think, that was like a few generations ago.

Alex: 00:42:58

They, they tried to turn it into a set box and completely lost the, the gaming market to PlayStation at the time.

Alex: 00:43:04

and, and micro and Xbox is actually in, in, in trouble as one of the platforms that's doing the least well right now.

Brian: 00:43:10

I feel bad for Microsoft.

Troy: 00:43:12

That's it for this episode of people versus algorithms where each

Troy: 00:43:16

week we uncover patterns shaping media culture and technology.

Troy: 00:43:21

Big thanks as always to our producer, Vanja Arsenov.

Troy: 00:43:24

She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable and we appreciate her very, very much.

Troy: 00:43:30

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review.

Troy: 00:43:34

It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing.

Troy: 00:43:37

Remember, you can find People vs.

Troy: 00:43:38

Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube.

Troy: 00:43:43

Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.

Alex: 00:43:46

Yeah.

Brian: 00:43:47

Thank you, Alex.

Alex: 00:43:47

All right.

Alex: 00:43:48

Thank you.

Brian: 00:43:49

Daddy will be back next week and we'll get back

Brian: 00:43:50

to The

Alex: 00:43:52

the grand priest.

Brian: 00:43:53

okay.