GDC Recap, Roblox's AI, The Most Played Steam Games, TikTok at Congress, Expectations - The Creativ Briefing
Weekly Expertise for Smarter Marketing
Returned home to Venice beach this morning after a two and half week marathon at SXSW and GDC. Thinking about people management today, specifically how to handle it when someone doesn’t live up to your expectations.
I think the first step is to examine your own expectations. Did you communicate your need clearly enough? Were they reasonable? Did I provide enough direction?
If the answer to any of those questions was no, then reevaluate and go back to that person with a new ask. If it was a yes, ask that person why they think they fell short.
Both options give you a way to move forward with a more complete understanding.
3 Stories Dominating Headline
TikTok’s CEO appeared before Congress yesterday. He was grilled by lawmakers for several hours on children’s privacy, tracking and their relationship to China.
Why it Matters: TikTok and the US Federal government seem at an impass. TikTok claims congress was not interested in his answers and Congress claims Chew avoided questions. Expect TikTok to go to court.
Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, currently has 5 crypto based games available in its online store and another 20 or so in the pipeline.
Why it matters: While some gaming marketplaces such as Steam have barred NFT/Crypto based games, expect more web3 games that layer in blockchain technology to come to market.
Amazon confirms another round of layoffs, impacting 9,000 people in AWS, Twitch and other units. Amazon has announced another big round of layoffs, cutting 9,000 jobs just a few months after a massive layoff of 18,000 people.
Why it matters: A confluence of overhiring during the pandemic, inflation, rising interest rates, and a turbulent banking industry is rearing its ugly head, causing a continual wave of layoffs across big tech.
Games Developer Conference Recap
I attended the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco all this week. Here are several takeaways from the world’s largest gaming conference:
Introducing hybrid-casual games. These are games that are easy to get into but level up the challenges for players. This is a middle ground between midcore, serious gaming, and casual games, like Candy Crush or Scrabble.
Web3 and Gaming Grow Closer. Metamask has just launched an SDK with Unity. Kongregate, a gaming studio and purchasing platform, has launched several NFT enabled games. HyperPlay Gaming has launched a UI that layers in a web3 wallet natively into games for gamers to purchase upgrades and others on the blockchain. You might not see it in your game, but blockchain will be running in the background.
AI Comes to Play. One of the most impressive presentations was Roblox’s rollout of Code Assist, the inhouse developed AI enables players to complete levels, properties, physicals, enemies, and more with AI generated code. It was demoed for a several hundred person audience and went live that same day. Every session about AI in gaming was booked full. AI applications have come to gaming in a big way and are here to stay.
Video Games Are the Most Important Media Industry. 24,000 people showed up to fill conference halls, the expo floor, and countless restaurants, bars, and cafes. All the best talent and technical expertise has left traditional studios for the gaming industry. Gaming will dominate the entertainment and media industry for the foreseeable future.
Stat of the Week
These are video games with the most players using the steam client at the same time, in other words playing at any one time. An interesting stat because it measures current fandoms and buzz around certain titles.
Lost Ark, the MMO action RPG was Steam’s most played game in 2022, peaking at over 1.3 million concurrent players.
Titles like CSgo, Dota, PubG, and APEX Legends have been on this list for a long time. Measuring gamer retention over time is a key performance indicator of how well games survive.
One Fun Thing
There’s a lot of professed thought leaders in marketing, speaking to the current state of artificial intelligence. Gary Marcus, professor of AI at MIT, puts them to shame.
A compelling 15 min chat on the frontiers, current applications, and limits of artificial intelligence today. I watched it twice.