Game Economist Cast

GEC BONUS EP: What's up at GDC 2025 (w/Charlie Hsu)

• Phillip Black

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Phillip & Eric navigate the strangely subdued landscape of GDC 2025, pondering if there really is such a thing as a free lunch. Chris dials in, wondering if his absence is secretly the key to Eric's roundtable success. 

They dissect the talks, the conference economics, the rise of mobile's respectability, and a guest in economy designer, Charlie Hsu.

In this episode:

  • Is the game industry actually shrinking, or just taking a nap? And if Web3 isn't the savior, what's left besides... sweeps?
  •  Is GDC just a cleverly disguised wealth transfer from sponsors to developers
  • What's the latest "reasonable" pitch for Web3 in games?
  • What's the economic model behind those San Francisco walk-up shops overflowing with candy bars right next to the register? High margins? A tourist trap? Something... else
Eric:

Okay, cool.

Phillip Black:

All right. Drum roll. Game con was cast episode. Fuck man. 30 something always

Chris K-S:

20, 38, 39, 38.

Phillip Black:

This is

Eric:

the third

Phillip Black:

GDC special edition. This is the third one. Yeah. You did the one on the floor. That's true. Third, GDC, special edition. Not as special as last year's.

Eric:

We're missing Chris. Chris couldn't make it out this year,

Chris K-S:

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I feel bad.

Eric:

You weren't the only one who didn't make it out this year. There was

Chris K-S:

That's what I hear.

Eric:

Yeah.

Phillip Black:

You could feel it on like the floor. This this GDC,

Chris K-S:

I heard the floor was like 67% full.

Phillip Black:

Yeah, that sounds right to me. That sounds right to me. And

Chris K-S:

It's crazy.

Phillip Black:

booth, you can really start to see it thin and out. Like it was a lot of countries like Pakistan, Chile, a lot of those countries show up, but I thought they had an outsized presence or it felt like a bigger share of the presence.

Eric:

Yeah. The, the country based, uh, booster. The India, Italy, Spain, they had all their, like Brazil, their like local

Phillip Black:

Japan was there. I was like, why does Japan need to bear? Everyone wants to be in Japan. It's not that hard. Just gimme the visa. Yeah. I'm there. Square Annex wants me. You have me. I know that was a little depressing. That

Chris K-S:

I heard they dismantled the the avalanche booth. No Web3 presence.

Phillip Black:

No, you actually have to earn it. You have to go on a clicker game. And if you clicked it enough, avalanche would appear.

Eric:

What is this joke? I don't understand.

Chris K-S:

Got a trade in.

Phillip Black:

trying to make fun of telegram

Chris K-S:

I like the cookie clicker. Crap.

Phillip Black:

Gabe Laden was here as well. Missed CE former CEO of machine zone. Former CCEO of machine zone. Now CEO of limit break. Pumping app tokens, but not as much as having, I would say, refined view on Web3. Web3, definitely like very small presence here, he keeps being more and more reasonable about what Web3 could be to games, which is oh man, what if we could just add 20, 30% top line from Web3? Doesn't need to replace web two economies, which I feel like is a retreat.

Eric:

They were dreaming crazy high in the sky ship before. Yep. Yeah,

Chris K-S:

I was running some numbers like avalanche's valuation two months ago. Their market cap was 50% of Roblox market cap. That gives you the idea of like how mispriced these things are. It's of course this game is not worth$5 billion. It's a video game with 10,000 players.

Eric:

Three bullet point summary of GDC. All one, game industry in decline. Not much more to say there. The highlights if you don't check out. I think that, yeah, that Matthew Ball article, I thought did a good job summarizing it. 0.2 I. I've figured out how to get a bunch of free drink and food. I wasn't sponsored to come. I'm a little salty about that. I won't get into it but yeah, I got, I purchased zero alcoholic drinks and I minimized my food budget this year by so I'll talk about how I did that. And then 0.3. I think the thing I'm realizing about GDC is that this is like an industry like labor collective, if that makes sense. This is for game developers, right? This is not for game companies. This is not for like sponsors and they're welcome here. Give us your money so we can funnel it towards the community. But at the end of the day, this is something for developers, by developers and yeah, you love to see it.

Phillip Black:

And I heard that if you're a speaker, you get a free lunch. Yeah. There is such thing as a free lunch.

Eric:

And it's A-G-D-C-A subsidized lunch. Yeah. Yeah, as a, I gave a talk to this this time, which was fun. And yeah, they, you get a free pass to the whole event. They give you$75 of credit to spend on food at the

Chris K-S:

Nice.

Eric:

Which, everything on the expo floor is overcharged overpriced, so it's Not actually worth$75. Literally a Coors Light. was$13 which is exorbitant. And, that sounds about normal for sf. That might actually be like the low SF prices. No,$8 top

Chris K-S:

how was the round table, Eric?

Eric:

It was good. We had a decent turnout, maybe around 50 people. And a bunch of us went out for lunch after, which is great. I honestly

Chris K-S:

That's amazing.

Eric:

fun than the round.

Phillip Black:

You gotta talk

Chris K-S:

50 people. Oh my dude, that's that's literally a million percent more than last year. We got where we got zero if you count Eric, then we had one show up

Phillip Black:

growth rate, right? Yeah. Infinite growth

Chris K-S:

man.

Phillip Black:

Infinity and beyond.

Chris K-S:

This is not looking good for me. As a, as an experiment my attendance correlates to zero.

Phillip Black:

Then all only knew Chris was gone. I was like, let's

Chris K-S:

They're like, Let's go.

Eric:

after last year I was just like, I'm just gonna be obnoxious about It on LinkedIn. I'm just gonna fucking blast this everywhere I can.

Chris K-S:

It worked. That's amazing.

Eric:

Honestly, the talk was just like a bunch of fun facts. Like the talk was like a listicle of here's an economics phenomenon, like perverse incentives. Here's a real world example, here's a game example. And I just did that. Like 10 times. It was fun. It was a good discussion. A pretty wide range of people showed up. Like you got, designers, product people. There was like a narrative ex-lawyer, narrative designer. There. There's some, some like communist radical there talking about how he wanted to create for like self-preservation or whatever. Some VC showed up. Yeah, it was a wide crowd.

Phillip Black:

It kind of matches like the game economist cast audience. Like the more we, like we meet people, the weirder it gets. Yeah. It's a random, it's a random collection of people. Yeah. Like I remember the, we, there was a Frisbee guy who listened. Oh yeah.

Chris K-S:

Oh my God. The Frisbee guy,

Eric:

the rules of ultimate

Chris K-S:

ultimate Frisbee. He

Phillip Black:

Yeah. It's truly a strange collective that are

Chris K-S:

ah.

Phillip Black:

economics. Yeah. Like it's not just the econ people, it's not just the game people. There's a lot of people who are just. into weird stuff. Yeah, I guess we make it there. I like that summary. That's a really good summary. Top three. Top three. Alright. So I would say Gabe Leaden said something and I said on Deconstructive Fund podcast, and I'll say it again here, fuck man. We gotta wanna live games Industry has to want to live like, we have to, like actively try to like, preserve ourselves and want to grow. The most exciting thing here can't be real money gambling or sweeps. And if you're not familiar with sweeps, it's basically just a lottery system that we figured out how to put into mobile gaming. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of fascinating, interesting problems that they have, but that can't be, that can't be the bleeding edge of gaming. I refuse to accept that it's not gonna be crypto. We know that. Or at least it's not gonna be crypto to, to save us, so to speak. What else is there on the horizon? Like to get truly excited about these days? I'm struggling with that. My, my

Eric:

perspective is that we're just gonna match GDP and consumption growth. And there aren't any giant like, booms on the horizon and games has been so used to like a giant boom happening every five years that like, we've come to expect it, but we might just be holding steady for now.

Chris K-S:

Don't games usually do good. During recessions, don't we usually get a bump during recessions because everybody's sad.

Eric:

that, but I'm pretty sure there was just like a super strong correlation with the We success during the 2008 financial crisis. Like I'm pretty sure it was just that

Phillip Black:

Eric

Chris K-S:

Maybe it'll be the switch too.

Phillip Black:

The thing that Eric Seaford points out is I. We, first of all, we haven't had a free to play recession really since 2008, right? 2008. Free to play didn't really exist, so we don't really know how free to play is gonna do in a recession. so when you compare the things we say about consoles, I find that hard. The thing is everyone seems to want. Gaming to be both a luxury good, a normal good, and inferior good, which means that we're gonna grow no matter what. And I think that's not how this works. Yeah. That's not how the income elasticity of demand works.

Eric:

I'll say is such a wide umbrella at this point. That it is a inferior good, normal good and luxury good. Just some sector of it is. And so even if games is an aggregate, doesn't grow, someone is doing all right. But then,

Chris K-S:

Yeah.

Eric:

point it's like. When we say games industry, is that it's like saying image industry, right? Or like video industry okay, but that means so many different things. Like video advertisement, TV shows, movies, YouTube, and

Chris K-S:

Hasn't console growth been pretty flat? And the only real growth that we've seen is actually for mobile. It's like over the last 10 years It looks Yeah, exactly. That's where crypto's gonna come in. It's gonna, it's gonna take the rest of the cake.

Phillip Black:

yeah.

Eric:

I guess

Chris K-S:

So you.

Eric:

just to, to summarize the bleak outlook for gaming, There's no big growth factor in sight, right? Ar, vr, nothing there? Crypto not much there. What else was there? UGC most of those things have flopped. There was all these venture backed live service games, all those, like X riot, blizzard, epic people, most of those have flopped. So yeah there's no. Like gold. There's no like golden sunset in, in sight, I think. Oh. And then on top of that developing countries are getting So, much better at making their own games. We see stuff like Marvel rivals coming out of China and eating part of the US market, whereas in the past it was like the developed economies were eating the emerging economies markets. And so that is, I'm sure China Games is doing, but China has problems, but that. from the perspective of a Western developer that is also hurting us as the game industry. Yeah.

Chris K-S:

It's interesting. I actually wrote a blog about my trip to India with my wife for a wedding, and I was just like. This is not the place for to extract value right now in the games industry. I understand why the I in-app purchasing is so low in those countries. And then Phil, I think you were talking about like developing countries on LinkedIn. I. Or something similar. The only way we're gonna grow is if the world economy grows. Which I said I think in two podcast episodes ago, and everyone laughed at me. But I feel like now everyone's oh, geez. I wanted to ask real quick what was Gabe Laden's sobering take on Web3 as he just like. Has he just priced in his, his is his pitch finally like a reasonable rational? Does it have a rational p and e ratio? Is it no longer insane?

Phillip Black:

I didn't see his talk on Sunday where a lot of this I was communicated secondhand. I think everyone knows what Web3 is, and now it's up to everyone else to figure out how they're gonna build around that. And I think he's made it a conscious decision to not buy into the bullshit with crypto. He knows it's not sustainable. He knows that we need more sustainable, long run, durable and dependable things, and. A lot of what's happening in crypto does not reflect that, and I think willing to point that out, which I love, pointing out that there's a lot of wash trading on Ethereum,

Eric:

three years too late. Yeah.

Phillip Black:

I don't, I, I don't disagree. I don't disagree, but I think okay, if you're pitching to up two publisher and you're like, Hey, we're gonna grow your game by 20 to 30%, we're not gonna replace any of the web two stuff, and it's just about expanding the audience with this feature. That becomes more of a persuasive pitch, right? If I'm a scopely looking at Marvel Strike Force, or even Star Trek Fleet Command, there might be something there. Yeah. Don't

Eric:

wanna turn this into the Web3 debate, but I'm skeptical. Who wants this thing?

Chris K-S:

Everybody is coming to the same realization,

Eric:

what?

Chris K-S:

like I,

Eric:

always saying that I, was just, I had that I had to tow the company line. I'm not towing it anymore. Fair enough.

Chris K-S:

I, I've talked to, I've talked to.

Eric:

about Riot. Yeah.

Chris K-S:

I've talked to a number of Web3 founders whose companies have recently gone under. And they all have like very similar sobering takes. It's oh. Shit, we did this the wrong way. It was just like everything was priced before, it was like before there was a product. And I think that you're just gonna get a bunch of mis pricess when you do that. But yeah. You know what's funny about Web3 is like the only companies that are still around are the ones with tokens. Ironically. It's like all these guys who are like, we're not gonna do a token because we're gonna do it the right way. And like now they're out of business and it's ugh, geez. Dunno what to think of that.

Eric:

Catch out while it's hot. What do they say? Capture your gain, take your gains. That's the finance thing.

Chris K-S:

Yeah. Yeah.

Phillip Black:

pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered. What? Never heard this. No. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Who is a pig and who is a hog? I. It's just don't be too greedy.

Chris K-S:

Don't be too greedy.

Eric:

pig? Yeah, pretty much. Oh,

Chris K-S:

It's a

Eric:

Alright.

Chris K-S:

big pig.

Eric:

Oh,

Chris K-S:

Yeah. But anyway okay, so Web3 is dead. Gaming is also suffering though. Hey, you know what? Web3 just got a bad break. They got into things right when the industry was cooling off. The big, the argument I'm hearing in crypto right now is that the reason that crypto is suffering so much is because the Fed was making non-risk assets more attractive, and it killed crypto because crypto is a risky asset, which is probably the most creative and obscene like trying to get out of jail card I've ever heard. It's like Apple being like, fuck you fed. You fucked us over because our to our share price is more volatile than a treasury. I.

Phillip Black:

Can I double down on realizing GDC is really for us and no one else? Oh yeah. Let's talk about it because I finally got a venue pass. to the talks. And the talks are clearly, it feels like it's for a colleague. It's refreshing. It feels honest. It feels refreshing.

Eric:

Wait, Sorry. What was it for colleagues? What does that mean? Yeah,

Phillip Black:

it feels like you're talking to your colleagues and you're trying to teach them something. When you give a talk there. It doesn't feel aggressive or like looking down. It feels like you're sharing amongst equals Huh? Trying to advance your craft. Like it's incredibly refreshing experience.

Eric:

I've had a mix where there's ones exactly like that where it's like game devs, four game devs, and then there's like the business pitch talks. Oh, it's like some offs. Selling you awful, some service. Awful. But the ones that are by devs for devs, like those ones are amazing. I went to one that was like, it was about music. And there was like a live trio, like a clarinet, bass and guitar trio, just like playing songs out there. I don't know. It was a lot of

Phillip Black:

fun. But yeah. Anyway 25 years, 25 lessons or something along those lines for dual masters was my favorite talk. And if you have, I don't know if you're

Phillip:

working CCGs. Yeah. This is gonna

Phillip Black:

be a great talk to, to see in the Vault. Dual masters, if you're not familiar, was originally Magic the gathering. And they spun it off to adapt it to the Japanese market, and they end up like really going in a different direction with the game. And it's been around for 20 years. And they have an anime and a manga based on It just to be clear, It's not yuchi o it's just called dual masters. And the design learning about the, I've always been curious, but learning about this game is fascinating. They have a US team and they have a Japanese team. So the US team is in Wizard of the Coast. The Japanese team, I think is in Bandit, Namco. I think they, they collaborate on some of this and they only have about I think it was 25 or 30 head count. They've been around for 15, 20 years, like something absolutely crazy. And there's this one moment in the talk where he talks about the Quest system that they made for these physical cards. And the Quest would have a individual task you have to complete during the game. Then what happens is you unfold the card and you get your second quest. You unfold it once more and you get your third quest. You complete your third quest, you flip over the card and it makes a giant monster. The cards unfold like a trifold. Yeah. To visualize for the listeners in the audience.

Eric:

It's the card. It's not just a card. It's like a tri, like a pamphlet. Imagine a pamphlet you unfold. Flap one, unfold, flap two, flip it over. There's like an epic monster displayed on the back. Really fucking cool.

Phillip Black:

Basically really cool game design mechanic. The game itself also doesn't have formats, so you can play from cards that were at the origin of the game and they have over a thousand cards which is mind boggling to think about, and you didn't get into a lot of the balancing around it, but I would've loved to learn more. Oh, just never rotating shit out is a balancing shit show. I'm just gonna say that I, it somehow they've made it work. Maybe it's just A bunch of filthy casuals. It is four kids actually. That's probably true.

Chris K-S-1:

a, a normal set in magic is like 250 cards.

Phillip Black:

Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

that's actually that's like your typical standard pool of cards Anyway,

Phillip Black:

Fair enough. That's a good point.

Chris K-S-1:

You

Phillip Black:

Yep.

Chris K-S-1:

that.

Phillip Black:

so those talks were good. It's good. It's good to be like amongst colleagues.

Eric:

So the other thing about GDC is if you don't know what you're doing you show up, you pay like$2,000 for an extra for a pass, which is fucking ludicrous, right? Yeah. And you got these people like, oh, I've got some generative AI tool and I'm gonna try to sell it to game developers, right? They're paying out the ass, they're sponsoring events, right? They're, these third parties are funneling money into the game development community. Web3 last year. Great example, right? Tons of money just pouring in for no reason. And essentially what I. I don't think this is explicit, but GDC is effectively subsidizing the game developers with this money, right? So if you're giving a talk, you get a password free, right? If there's all these sort of like events around the venue that are, subsidized this way. And if you know how to get a backdoor, you can get a backdoor. You find a friend, oh, I'm leaving on Wednesday. Okay, just gimme your pass on Wednesday and I'll just use it for the rest of the week. That kind of shit. And there's a lot of people who don't even attend. You

Phillip Black:

could do that. There's no individual. I mean, It's got your name, but they're not gonna check. Yeah. You just scan a QR code before you get into all the rooms. Oh, I didn't even think about that. A cute economist to you.

Eric:

Yeah. And then on top of that, there's a lot of people who show up who just never buy a pass. I talked to a couple the Odyssey guys, Dax. Shout out to Dax. I love that guy. And they're just like, yeah, we're just here in town for the week because our friends are all here and we're not, we didn't buy a pass'cause we don't wanna pay for it. But there's enough value in just like the mingling and the conversations that happen outside the conference itself. But it's the first timers, the out industry outsiders who are paying full price to get in to have a booth, et cetera.

Phillip Black:

And they're subsidizing the rest of us. It's really good shelling point for the industry. Like it becomes like a high school reunion almost.

Eric:

Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

How much money from startups is spent at GDC at these types of events. Like what percentage of funds that VCs put out there are then like indirectly put back into the into the game development community through like GDC, Gamescom, these types of things where you spend a shit ton of money for pretty much zero. What's the return to that spending. And I think like E three being canceled is a pretty good indicator that it's not a huge not a great ROI.

Phillip Black:

I think a lot of the spend is B2B businesses, It's people selling third party tools. This is a really unique market you get access to, And I'm sure the CPIs would be really high to find game developers who make purchasing decision for studios. But half the show floor felt like a IR tools.

Eric:

The big boosts were all game tools. B2B. Yeah. How many times did you see the word AI used in these booths? Decent amount, not as much on the show floor. I went to a external event that like, I don't wanna shit on them too much, but like I, they were, it was like an AI tool. They clearly didn't know shit about games and it was cringe. But the other thing is like GDC is like game developers meeting with other game developers and normally there's these like. Company barriers that sort of limit communication, right? Oh, you're not supposed to share our trade secrets. But the thing I found is that like game devs love games and they love other game devs, and they'll just talk to each other. I got Charlie here. I don't wanna name his last name, but, I milked him for secrets about his game and, I'm sure I love that. Yeah. And if he asked me anything about my game, I'll tell him everything. I have nothing to hide. And this is a way in which, we talk about corporate consolidation and labor markets and shit, but this is a way in which the labor force is it's not a union, but there's a collective bond of Hey, actually we're in it for each other. We're loyal to each other more so than we are loyal to our employers. And it is really nice to have that like firsthand. Yeah.

Phillip Black:

I don't know. I'd reframe it a little bit. I don't know if it's loyal, loyalty to each other. It's almost like loyalty to the craft. Yeah. And if you trade things, I wouldn't say trade's also not the right words, but if you contribute to the public domain, there's all these public externalities you get from knowledge because it's non-rival risks, which is nice. It's zero marginal cost to distribute information. And I would agree with you. It's actually nice. I don't think it harms the industry. I think it makes us all better off, and I think everyone expects it to be honest with you. Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

It sounds a lot like an academic conference, like you're just a bunch of the same people with the same interests without that competitive when you're working for your company, that your company is trying to outcompete other companies. But when you're at an academic conference, it's I'm just going to chat with my friends and trade secrets and maybe we even collaborate on something. We come up with a project. That's always been my, my feeling as well. Whenever I go though, I do a lot of at least in the past, I've only been at GDCI think three times. And at least one and a half of those, I was like a BD person for some stupid reason. But I was basically doing

Eric:

You're a selling Or are you buying or selling?

Chris K-S-1:

I was selling.

Phillip Black:

I'll edit in the resident evil clip right here. What are you buying? What are you selling? I'll buy at the right price.

Chris K-S-1:

but that was that. I would say I enjoyed GDC much more last year when I was more of just like a participant. I was just wandering around, just having fun, like going to see people. Did a little bit of stuff for my company, but it was more so about just like being a game. Person at a game conference. And it was a much more enjoyable experience than running from hotel to hotel. cause that is like a lot of GDC you guys talk about these people who don't get passes. A lot of it is them sitting in a hotel lobby from person to person. Which is like less magical. I don't know.

Phillip Black:

Yeah, you get really fit though. Just like schedule all your meetings back to back with five minute travel time and you're gonna get in shape here.

Eric:

If you're a big enough shot, they come to you. Yeah that's the meta I've seen is they'll have, they'll post up at a restaurant or at a hotel and like they just, everyone comes to that man.

Phillip Black:

So one, one of the people I work with just got a table at Foggo, decia, the Brazilian Steakhouse and just paid a flat fee and got an unlimited amount of food just coming to him consistently. So like steaks just kept landing like every 30 minutes. It was incredible.

Eric:

And there's just like a rotating selection of guests to show up,

Phillip Black:

yeah. You just post it on LinkedIn, just come hang out with me, free steak. And it was incredible steak, by the way, it's cooked in its own fat, served in a salt board. Oh

Chris K-S-1:

Go Chow is it's next level.

Phillip Black:

yeah. For sure.

Chris K-S-1:

How are your clients doing, Phil? You're a consultant, you're meeting with dozens of people. are they excited about?

Phillip:

Oof. Not much. Oof.

Eric:

I the one positive I'll spin, I'll throw on is AI tools as overhyped AI is, it actually massively reduces prototyping and like low end development. And at the very top end, right? If you need the best art and the best, whatever. It, it's not gonna cut it. And also the big companies are super afraid to use it for both legal reasons and also just internal company culture. Like the artists all hate it, but if you're like a small dev and you're prototyping some idea, it makes things lightning fast. Not just on the art asset generation, but also on the code development side. I work with a bunch of card game designers. They're all prototyping stuff in Bolt, people using Cursor and all these AI software development tools. And yeah, you can bring an idea to prototype so much faster. That I think that end of the games industry will do better.

Phillip Black:

That is what I'll say was number three was going around the indie section at the end of the conference, the number of 3D worlds fully built out art, I don't know, art schemas or like fully built out worlds 3D action for like these small indie devs is almost unheard of. Normally, like a lot of the indie games they're cute. They have storytelling. They're 2D, they have one or two mechanics. When I went to that area, the boot the the expo floor, I was shocked at how powerful Unreal has been to help power some of this and probably some of the AI tools are having an effect here, but like the ambition is also arising from smaller developers. I'm sure it's supply side driven, but I was still very impressed to see a lot of 3D high fidelity worlds from maybe teams of five or six, and you would never have seen that beforehand.

Eric:

There's a lot of fear right now of like corporate consolidation especially in tech. But I, it's nice to see this helping the small fish.

Phillip Black:

May maybe, actually I wanna change mine. I'm gonna add all that shit. All right. Mobile. Mobile has found a place at GDC. Maybe that's what I wanna say is mobile has always had, I think, respect issues with the gaming industry, particularly like with HD folks. And GDC has always been a PC console space because that is what originally started was PC console. Where I think Mobile now has now demands the respect of everyone. And as a conference for colleagues, I don't think anyone looks down at anyone else. There was a great Candy crush panel here. The mobile game doctor guys gave their usual talk live service summit. At the beginning of the week, there was a bunch of other mobile talks that I really loved. I, it is clear to me the mobile is getting its respect from the industry now. We're 50. We're 50 50. PC console basically shows up in EV or pc, hd, HD, mobile, and it shows up in every report. And I feel like that's really reflected in this conference. And also just like the level of respect I think people give to mobile now is real.

Eric:

That's back in the day. Like when did you start at Scopely?

Phillip Black:

2018.

Eric:

2018. 2019. Like back in that

Phillip Black:

day, did you

Eric:

feel,

Phillip Black:

was

Eric:

the disrespect palpable?

Phillip Black:

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It was like mobile games. What the fuck? Like none of that garbage, like it just. It felt like a dumping ground for garbage. And I don't think that's the case anywhere. I think everyone respects what it takes To, make those type of games, particularly the services. I think that's ultimately what's brought what's brought the respect to the yard. It's not the milkshake, it's the live service. And so I think that's been really cool to see

Chris K-S-1:

To be clear, donut in hole is still garbage. That

Phillip Black:

donut in hole. Oh, you mean all in hole? all in hole. All in hole's. Awesome man.

Chris K-S-1:

crap is just it's just a bunch of trash.

Eric:

That's, there's always, again, like I said, it's like a broad medium, right? Yeah, there's if you want to look at all video content. Yeah, there's a bunch of garbage in there, but you got your fine art pieces too.

Phillip Black:

The, we went to an indie game fest, and I would say the thing that, that I really need to discipline myself on is whenever we play a game, I immediately wanted to slap like a meta onto it. And I was like, how can we add hard currency today? And like, how can we mechanize this? What can we do for level design to get like a content funnel going? Dude,

Eric:

there was a dude who, it was like a simple puzzle game, clearly some. Idea. he cooked up himself, right? No. Marketability to this thing. And Phil just starts telling him like, Hey you should add this streaks mechanic. Maybe this is how you can monetize. This is how you maximize retention. The dude's I don't know. I just made this for fun.

Chris K-S-1:

he pro, that's how you make money, right? It's like I

Eric:

Like I had a baseball cap that said math on it. I never asked him about what

Phillip Black:

it, what I will say that I thought was really interesting about the indie developers is when you have these one person game teams. It's immediately apparent what they're really good at and also what they're really bad at. Like there was this one game, and I'll never forget it. It's it's about this robot butler and you are going underneath tables almost like a Roomba. I. And people are like throwing dishes on you and you're trying to catch them, and then you try to balance the dishes that are thrown to you, and then you dump them into something that approaches a dishwasher. And the character is so fucking cute, right? Because they ended up giving him wheels, but he refuses to actually roll on the wheels, but he keeps stepping everywhere. And clearly that was, something on purpose. And then the eyes emote, but the controls and the sensitivity on how you actually got the dishes. Just didn't work as well as I had hoped. But the storytelling just draws you into the world. It's a good highlight of what's working.

Chris K-S-1:

Did you say the guy was wearing a math hat? Sorry, Phil. This is completely off

Phillip Black:

Yeah. A math

Eric:

hat. Yeah. His hat said math on it.

Phillip Black:

Just math.

Eric:

I don't, know if it was like an Andrew Yang thing or,

Chris K-S-1:

Yeah that's what it was.

Eric:

oh, okay.

Chris K-S-1:

it is. Make America think harder.

Eric:

Maybe he just likes math.

Chris K-S-1:

que

Eric:

like math.

Chris K-S-1:

Did you guys end up going to the revenue mini summit by

Eric:

We, we did, dude, that was my favorite event. I just wanna say favorite event. Also the best free food I had. So yeah, so I, I will recommend it for two fronts. One, it's let me give you the vibes, right? It's like much more of a chill academic conference, right? Like people are showing up the presenting. It's dry, but there's like a lot of content in there and you can tell they're experts on it. And also they weren't trying to sell you anything. Yeah, they were just like, here's information, here's like a new technique people are using. Here's when it's good, here's when it's bad. They're not like trying to say you gotta use it, buy this from me.

Phillip Black:

And it was buy game data Pros. They sponsored it. You should go buy their stuff. Go to the website. Game Data Pros.

Eric:

Love those guys. Love those guys. Yeah. And also though the food was good. I don't know. Yeah, Also there's so. many like loud events and like this place was quiet and chill, so

Chris K-S-1:

I remember last year was, it was a very pleasant break from the chaos of GDC. So our friend Julian,

Phillip:

Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

with EUT. Is that

Phillip:

Yeah. Yo.

Chris K-S-1:

Did they so I'm curious what what was the content like? I remember one of the, I don't wanna call it a criticism, but one of the things that I noticed last time was, some of the, some more not indie devs, but people who didn't know anything about monetization at all or revenue optimization were there trying to learn something about how to make money. And they were a little bit like, you guys said it was a academic conference, so I assume it was mostly just like talking to other people who were like that. It wasn't something where, you know, Joe shows up who's trying to monetize, his like match three game. He didn't learn

Phillip Black:

There, there's a, there was a little bit, I think there's a little bit of that. Like one of the things I've noticed that we often underestimate is most devs. Most devs when they wanna make their game better, will literally just Google, how do I do this? Like blog, post, deconstruct, or fund, like this is how they've won. Is that like they've owned SEO, right? Like most people just put it into Google and like we don't title our shit like how to make more money and match. And I think we maybe should be more straightforward so we can get some SEO going. But that's how they do it, right? They just, they read it like, this is the problem I need to solve. Show up and I'll see if I'll learn anything. That's why I think your talk was really good. Like it was pretty clear. This is, it's a round table. We're gonna be talking about these things like it goes a long way.

Chris K-S-1:

Yeah.

Phillip Black:

We do have someone who should join us. You should give your impressions of GDC. Just give your impressions as a first timer. Yeah. Just you just say you're economy designer.

Eric:

This was Phil's dream to get a guest at GDC. This

Phillip Black:

is all I wanted. It's all I wanted. We're joined by an economy designer. Do you mind introducing yourself a little bit? However you like?

Charlie:

Hi my name's Charlie. I'm a game economy designer. I've been working in the industry for almost 12 ish years.

Phillip Black:

Been, you previously were at Kabam. Yeah. And now you're at a really great company. We don't have to talk about. Yeah. This is your first GDC? Yes, it is my

Charlie:

first GDC.

Phillip Black:

Tell, tell us about it. What was it like? What were your expectations coming in?

Charlie:

A lot of people have told me what Gigi feels like. And obviously, like prior to coming here, I also asked other people so I expected it to be super busy, super chaotic. But my actual experience was it's, it was fine. It wasn't that overwhelming.

Phillip Black:

Okay. Yeah, it was nice. Yeah. Did you go to any of the talks?

Charlie:

Yeah I went to quite a few talks, but I think as a first timer, if I was to do it again. I think I will spend more time on the socializing aspect. Whoa. There were definitely some talks that was really good. I watched one about how Val became Val. That was a really cool one.

Phillip:

Tell us more. How did Val become Val?

Charlie:

It'll be on the vault, but essentially like she described like all the struggles that they had starting the company and just some. Yeah, some insider stuff like I saw, I thought that was a very fascinating talk as in as someone that's just looking at them from the outside, it just seems okay, they're this company that has like everything together. They know What's going on. They obviously did everything right, but yeah, no, it's just Fort Knox

Phillip Black:

over there. It's feels like you get no information out. Yeah. They just look so buttoned up.

Charlie:

Yeah. But yeah, like I think my learning is that it doesn't matter what company you're from, like everyone has their own struggles and just, yeah, that's. Somewhat comforting to know, okay. Yeah.

Phillip Black:

Any new connections here? Like any new people you met? You guys? Yeah,

Charlie:

Actually, so interestingly, I actually spent a lot of time with my other coworkers. There's a lot of us that came here and one of the. I guess one of the things about the company is that we are quite isolated if we don't work on the same team. Yeah. So I actually, wait,

Phillip Black:

it took coming to America from Europe for you guys to get together and talk each other?

Charlie:

Yes. So that's how we bonded. Like a lot of us actually just got together and Yeah. Got to know each other a lot better, so that's really cool. Yeah, I really enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah. Like a cell. Yes. Like a cell. Yeah.

Phillip Black:

Very cool. What do you think of San Francisco?

Charlie:

San Francisco? This is your first time here. My second time in San Francisco, so this time it's a lot better. Okay. I like the city, but I hate the weather. The weather? is just really, this week compared Toland Oh, too much to scan. Yeah. Yeah, this week has been fine.

Chris K-S-1:

with the weather?

Charlie:

It's so chaotic, like the weather. On Sunday when I came here, it was at first it was sunny. Then within 15 minutes it started raining. Then it became super windy and it just cycled through that repetition for the next six hours. I was like, what is going on? Yeah,

Chris K-S-1:

You gotta have the you know all the different outfits. If you're gonna live in San Francisco, it gives you an opportunity to wear your special coat and your fancy hat and all this stuff.

Phillip:

that's true.

Chris K-S-1:

cool outfits if you don't have the cold, the rain, the snow, and the heat.

Charlie:

Yeah, I just essentially just gotta prepare for old weather. So yeah.

Phillip Black:

Any outlook? Outlook? Yeah. What's your outlook for the game industry going forward? Outlook. Do you feel better or worse about our future? Tell me whether I'm fucked or not.

Charlie:

I don't know. I have no idea about the outlook. I, all I can say is I don't know. There's a lot of people struggling right now in the industry, with all the layoffs and a lot of it is just, it's just really rough. It's a really tough time for a lot of people.

Chris K-S-1:

I was hoping I would get into this GDC conversation with you guys and you make me feel good about everything,

Eric:

yeah. If you get any advice to a new first time attendee, what would you tell'em?

Charlie:

Definitely learn stuff, but like I say. I wouldn't spend all of my time on there, the networking part, the talking to other people part, that's the part I really got the most value from, I think. Yeah. And especially I noticed that there were quite a few, students coming here for the first time don't be afraid to just go up to someone and say hi. Introduce yourself.

Phillip Black:

Yeah. I think that makes sense. Be willing to be a little bit aggressive. It also be okay when like people say no too. Yeah. It happens, but take your shot. No one's gonna think less of you for having said, Hey, do you have any time to

Eric:

chat?

Charlie:

Yeah sure.

Eric:

Yeah. I would definitely say most people are willing to chat. Most people have something interesting to say. And yeah, like I second that.

Charlie:

Round tables were really good. Eric's round table was great.

Phillip Black:

We'll have a link to it. G gc. GDC Vault, when it's out.

Chris K-S-1:

Charlie, did you meet did you meet the guys at that round table or did you meet'em some out other way?

Charlie:

That's how I met Eric actually.'cause then the round table, it was a more casual format and every, everyone, like people had an opportunity to speak and I think that made it easier for you to connect with other people.'cause you already had like a primed dialogue there. Yeah. So you're not like. Cold cold calling someone, right? That's a lot harder, I think.

Eric:

Yeah. With that. We also all went out for lunch after and that 11:00 AM time slot I think is actually great for that. Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

You just go to a random restaurant and

Eric:

So we all just got takeout and went to a nearby park, We went to the park, we got take out burritos and just sat in a park and it was great. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

Sounds awesome. This is that park that's like kind of up a level. It's like a

Eric:

No it was like several blocks away, but yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

Oh, okay.

Eric:

But yeah, those gardens are nice.

Phillip Black:

I do have an econ puzzle for us as I've walked around here that's been really bothering me, and I don't know if this is a true observation, but I think it's true. So there's all of these walk up convenience stores, sandwich coffee places, and they always have a shit ton of inventory. Like it's all just like cookies and like random bars, just in their original box that they've opened, just like fucking dumped by the cash register. And it's there's so many of these every five feet in San Francisco. It feels like a very San Francisco thing, and I can't figure out why that's the equilibrium here. Like what set of rules or incentives or institutions

Eric:

what seems puzzling to you about it?

Phillip Black:

I don't see any of these walkup places with all this shit laid out in front of you anywhere else besides here in sf

Eric:

when you say laid out, What do you You mean?

Phillip Black:

like they literally just will dump like three layers or three rows of inventory of like candy cookies, but at the counter, at the

Eric:

cash register, at

Phillip Black:

the counter, at the crash register, they're like, they have way too.

Chris K-S-1:

the gas station.

Phillip Black:

And they're like, their names are like Joe's coffee, and it's on like a brown sign in white text, and it's got like a phone number and it says coffee takeout.

Eric:

But what's puzzling to you about it? Is it that like they're willing to waste so much inventory or yeah. Why?

Phillip Black:

Why would you just buy all this inventory and leave it out? I thought food was perishable.

Chris K-S-1:

Is it a,

Phillip Black:

The margins are crazy.

Chris K-S-1:

a, this like a cart or a storefront?

Phillip Black:

It's a storefront. There's a million of these around sf. Am I wrong on this observation? I haven't seen what you're

Eric:

talking about, but I believe it. And I think just the margins are so ludicrously high that like they're willing to waste, they're like they, they're weight spoilage percentage that they're willing to tolerate as much higher,

Phillip Black:

but there's no brain.

Chris K-S-1:

that in other ar countries for sure.

Phillip Black:

Some of these places look pretty rough. To be honest with you. Yeah. They can sell some

Eric:

dumb ass, like tourist, like a cookie for$10. Like hell yeah.

Phillip Black:

It's not okay. It's not like blue bottle prices. We're like, we're talking like normal prices, like good prices. Normal for you. A huge markup for them. I got a taco for three bucks, which I was actually, it wasn't at one of these places, so I, yeah, I take it back. Cookies, I'd take it back. It was actually, I got a$15, I get a$21 sandwich at one of'em. I take everything back.

Chris K-S-1:

But it was good, right?

Phillip Black:

yeah. Yeah. I wanna take a, I'm gonna start documenting these places so when I reference this, people will know what I mean.

Chris K-S-1:

cause I'm not they had a lot of, it sounds like you're describing India. There was just like a ton of every but they were like these little huts, it was like a little cart and there was just like tons of stuff. And I'm like, like buying this stuff? Actually it's India. There's like billions of people everywhere. So they're buying it, but I could see the conundrum, but like I also would ask you who's buying all the mattresses at the mattress stores on every single street corner,

Phillip:

Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

Four mattress stores in champagne, and I have bought one mattress in my whole life up until this point,

Phillip Black:

think there's a different law on walkup windows here, which is much more common, that you could walk up to a storefront and be on The street and you could get food. I suck quite a, few places doing that. I assume there's some sort of like local ordinance that makes this possible and it's really cool.

Eric:

Yeah. Now that you mentioned that, it does seem like an SF thing. Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

The Walkups.

Eric:

Yeah. It's like just a window that's on the street side.

Chris K-S-1:

What's LA like? Do they have, LA is Weird one because it's like a giant sprawling suburb,

Phillip Black:

we don't have that.

Chris K-S-1:

now.

Phillip Black:

I don't think so. I can't remember. Yeah.

Chris K-S-1:

I got a really good bagel when I was in San Francisco last

Phillip Black:

A lot of bagels here. A lot of bagels.

Chris K-S-1:

yeah,

Phillip Black:

It's weird.

Chris K-S-1:

Guys, I gotta hop to

Phillip Black:

Cool. Any last thoughts before we wrap up here and I edit whatever this will become.

Eric:

I heard a, an anecdote of the quintessential San Francisco experience. Shout out to Richard Henkel. They were at a boba shop,

Phillip Black:

right?

Eric:

They're walking out, one of their friends is complaining, oh man, I can't believe I spent$20 on Boba. Overpriced boba. They walk out, they see a human being taking a shit on the street, speaks out, turd coming out. They're like oh God. Then a Waymo car, one of those self-driving, like Uber taxis comes up and someone hops into it and they're like, wow, this is The most San Francisco experience I've ever had.

Chris K-S-1:

The highest highs and the lowest lows.

Phillip Black:

Jarring. Jarring. Game Economist Cast. Episode 38. GDC. Special. Let's make it GDCG, GDC. Special GDC Special 2025 in the books. Hi, Chris. We'll talk to you soon.

Chris K-S-1:

See you guys.

People on this episode

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Phillip Black

Host
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Chris Kaczmarczyk-Smith

Co-host
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Eric Guam

Co-host