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submitted by NEW INFO 5 Results from share redemption are posted. Less than .2% redeemed. Very bullish as investors are showing extreme confidence in the future of PLBY.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/playboy-mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-120000721.html NEW INFO 4 Definitive Agreement to purchase 100% of Lovers brand stores announced 2/1.
https://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Playboy+%28MCAC%29+Confirms+Deal+to+Acquire+Lovers/17892359.html NEW INFO 3 I bought more on the dip today. 5081 total. Price rose AH to $12.38 (2.15%)
NEW INFO 2 Here is the full webinar.
https://icrinc.zoom.us/rec/play/9GWKdmOYumjWfZuufW3QXpe_FW_g--qeNbg6PnTjTMbnNTgLmCbWjeRFpQga1iPc-elpGap8dnDv8Zww.yD7DjUwuPmapeEdP?continueMode=true&tk=lEYc4F_FkKlgsmCIs6w0gtGHT2kbgVGbUju3cIRBSjk.DQIAAAAV8NK49xZWdldRM2xNSFNQcTBmcE00UzM3bXh3AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA&uuid=WN_GKWqbHkeSyuWetJmLFkj4g&_x_zm_rtaid=kR45-uuqRE-L65AxLjpbQw.1611967079119.2c054e3d3f8d8e63339273d9175939ed&_x_zm_rhtaid=866 NEW INFO 1 Live merger webinar with PLBY and MCAC on Friday January 29, 2021 at 12:00 NOON EST link below
https://mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/press-release-details/2021/Playboy-Enterprises-Inc.-and-Mountain-Crest-Acquisition-Corp-Participate-in-SPACInsider-ICR-Webinar-on-January-29th-at-12pm-ET/default.aspx Playboy going public: Porn, Gambling, and Cannabis !!!WARNING READING AHEAD!!! TL;DR at the end. It will take some time to sort through all the links and read/watch everything, but you should.
In the next couple weeks, Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp is taking Playboy public. The existing ticker MCAC will become PLBY. Special purpose acquisition companies have taken private companies public in recent months with great success. I believe this will be no exception. Notably, Playboy is profitable and has skyrocketing revenue going into a transformational growth phase.
Porn - First and foremost, let's talk about porn. I know what you guys are thinking. “Porno mags are dead. Why would I want to invest in something like that? I can get porn for free online.” Guess what? You are absolutely right. And that’s exactly why Playboy doesn’t do that anymore. That’s right, they eliminated their print division. And yet they somehow STILL make money from porn that people (see: boomers) pay for on their website through PlayboyTV, Playboy Plus, and iPlayboy. Here’s the thing: Playboy has international, multi-generational name recognition from porn. They have content available in 180 countries. It will be the only publicly traded adult entertainment (porn) company. But that is not where this company is going. It will help support them along the way. You can see every Playboy magazine through iPlayboy if you’re interested. NSFW links below:
https://www.playboy.com/ https://www.playboytv.com/ https://www.playboyplus.com/ https://www.iplayboy.com/ Gambling - Some of you might recognize the Playboy brand from gambling trips to places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Cancun, London or Macau. They’ve been in the gambling biz for decades through their casinos, clubs, and licensed gaming products. They see the writing on the wall. COVID is accelerating the transition to digital, application based GAMBLING. That’s right. What we are doing on Robinhood with risky options is gambling, and the only reason regulators might give a shit anymore is because we are making too much money. There may be some restrictions put in place, but gambling from your phone on your couch is not going anywhere. More and more states are allowing things like Draftkings, poker, state ‘lottery” apps, hell - even political betting. Michigan and Virginia just ok’d gambling apps. They won’t be the last. This is all from your couch and any 18 year old with a cracked iphone can access it. Wouldn’t it be cool if Playboy was going to do something like that? They’re already working on it. As per CEO Ben Kohn who we will get to later, “...the company’s casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth.” Honestly, I stopped researching Scientific Games' sports betting segment when I saw the word ‘omni-channel’. That told me all I needed to know about it’s success.
“Our SG Sports™ platform is an enhanced, omni-channel solution for online, self-service and retail fixed odds sports betting – from soccer to tennis, basketball, football, baseball, hockey, motor sports, racing and more.”
https://www.scientificgames.com/ https://www.microgaming.co.uk/ “This latter segment has become increasingly enticing for Playboy, and it said last week that it is considering new tie-ups that could include gaming operators like PointsBet and 888Holdings.”
https://calvinayre.com/2020/10/05/business/playboys-gaming-ops-could-get-a-boost-from-spac-purchase/ As per their SEC filing:
“Significant consumer engagement and spend with Playboy-branded gaming properties around the world, including with leading partners such as Microgaming, Scientific Games, and Caesar’s Entertainment, steers our investment in digital gaming, sports betting and other digital offerings to further support our commercial strategy to expand consumer spend with minimal marginal cost, and gain consumer data to inform go-to-market plans across categories.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tMDAA1 They are expanding into more areas of gaming/gambling, working with international players in the digital gaming/gambling arena, and a Playboy sportsbook is on the horizon.
https://www.playboy.com/read/the-pleasure-of-playing-with-yourself-mobile-gaming-in-the-covid-era Cannabis - If you’ve ever read through a Playboy magazine, you know they’ve had a positive relationship with cannabis for many years. As of September 2020, Playboy has made a major shift into the cannabis space. Too good to be true you say? Check their website. Playboy currently sells a range of CBD products. This is a good sign. Federal hemp products, which these most likely are, can be mailed across state lines and most importantly for a company like Playboy, can operate through a traditional banking institution. CBD products are usually the first step towards the cannabis space for large companies. Playboy didn’t make these products themselves meaning they are working with a processor in the cannabis industry. Another good sign for future expansion. What else do they have for sale? Pipes, grinders, ashtrays, rolling trays, joint holders. Hmm. Ok. So it looks like they want to sell some shit. They probably don’t have an active interest in cannabis right? Think again:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/24/playboy-gets-serious-about-cannabis-law-reform-advocacy-with-new-partnership-grants/?sh=62f044a65cea “Taking yet another step into the cannabis space, Playboy will be announcing later on Thursday (September, 2020) that it is launching a cannabis law reform and advocacy campaign in partnership with National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), Last Prisoner Project, Marijuana Policy Project, the Veterans Cannabis Project, and the Eaze Momentum Program.”
“According to information procured exclusively, the three-pronged campaign will focus on calling for federal legalization. The program also includes the creation of a mentorship plan, through which the Playboy Foundation will support entrepreneurs from groups that are underrepresented in the industry.” Remember that CEO Kohn from earlier? He wrote this recently:
https://medium.com/naked-open-letters-from-playboy/congress-must-pass-the-more-act-c867c35239ae Seems like he really wants weed to be legal? Hmm wonder why? The writing's on the wall my friends. Playboy wants into the cannabis industry, they are making steps towards this end, and we have favorable conditions for legislative progress.
Don’t think branding your own cannabis line is profitable or worthwhile? Tell me why these 41 celebrity millionaires and billionaires are dummies. I’ll wait.
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2019/07/12/top-celebrity-cannabis-brands/ Confirmation: I hear you. “This all seems pretty speculative. It would be wildly profitable if they pull this shift off. But how do we really know?” Watch this whole video:
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/playboy-ceo-telling-story-female-154907068.html Man - this interview just gets my juices flowing. And highlights one of my favorite reasons for this play. They have so many different business avenues from which a catalyst could appear. I think paying attention, holding shares, and options on these staggered announcements over the next year is the way I am going to go about it. "There's definitely been a shift to direct-to-consumer," he (Kohn) said. "About 50 percent of our revenue today is direct-to-consumer, and that will continue to grow going forward.” “Kohn touted Playboy's portfolio of both digital and consumer products, with casino-style gaming, in particular, serving a crucial role under the company's new business model. Playboy also has its sights on the emerging cannabis market, from CBD products to marijuana products geared toward sexual health and pleasure.” "If THC does become legal in the United States, we have developed certain strains to enhance your sex life that we will launch," Kohn said.
https://cheddar.com/media/playboy-goes-public-health-gaming-lifestyle-focus Oh? The CEO actually said it? Ok then. “We have developed certain strains…” They’re already working with growers on strains and genetics? Ok. There are several legal cannabis markets for those products right now, international and stateside. I expect Playboy licensed hemp and THC pre-rolls by EOY. Something like this:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/842996758/10-playboy-pre-roll-tubes-limited?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=pre+roll+playboy&ref=sr_gallery-1-2&organic_search_click=1 Maintaining cannabis operations can be costly and a regulatory headache. Playboy’s licensing strategy allows them to pick successful, established partners and sidestep traditional barriers to entry. You know what I like about these new markets? They’re expanding. Worldwide. And they are going to be a bigger deal than they already are with or without Playboy. Who thinks weed and gambling are going away? Too many people like that stuff. These are easy markets. And Playboy is early enough to carve out their spot in each. Fuck it, read this too:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimosman/2020/10/20/playboy-could-be-the-king-of-spacs-here-are-three-picks/?sh=2e13dcaa3e05 Numbers: You want numbers? I got numbers. As per the company’s most recent SEC filing:
“For the year ended December 31, 2019, and the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s historical consolidated revenue was $78.1 million and $101.3 million, respectively, historical consolidated net income (loss) was $(23.6) million and $(4.8) million, respectively, and Adjusted EBITDA was $13.1 million and $21.8 million, respectively.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Licensing segment contributed $44.2 million in revenue and $31.1 million in net income.”
“In the ninth months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Direct-to-Consumer segment contributed $40.2 million in revenue and net income of $0.1 million.”
“In the nine months ended September 30, 2020, Playboy’s Digital Subscriptions and Content segment contributed $15.4 million in revenue and net income of $7.4 million.”
They are profitable across all three of their current business segments.
“Playboy’s return to the public markets presents a transformed, streamlined and high-growth business. The Company has over $400 million in cash flows contracted through 2029, sexual wellness products available for sale online and in over 10,000 major retail stores in the US, and a growing variety of clothing and branded lifestyle and digital gaming products.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF Growth: Playboy has massive growth in China and massive growth potential in India. “In China, where Playboy has spent more than 25 years building its business, our licensees have an enormous footprint of nearly 2,500 brick and mortar stores and 1,000 ecommerce stores selling high quality, Playboy-branded men’s casual wear, shoes/footwear, sleepwear, swimwear, formal suits, leather & non-leather goods, sweaters, active wear, and accessories. We have achieved significant growth in China licensing revenues over the past several years in partnership with strong licensees and high-quality manufacturers, and we are planning for increased growth through updates to our men’s fashion lines and expansion into adjacent categories in men’s skincare and grooming, sexual wellness, and women’s fashion, a category where recent launches have been well received.” The men’s market in China is about the same size as the entire population of the United States and European Union combined. Playboy is a leading brand in this market. They are expanding into the women’s market too. Did you know CBD toothpaste is huge in China? China loves CBD products and has hemp fields that dwarf those in the US. If Playboy expands their CBD line China it will be huge. Did you know the gambling money in Macau absolutely puts Las Vegas to shame? Technically, it's illegal on the mainland, but in reality, there is a lot of gambling going on in China.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/10/19/magic-johnson-and-uncle-buds-cbd-brand-enter-china-via-tmall-partnership/?sh=271776ca411e “In India, Playboy today has a presence through select apparel licensees and hospitality establishments. Consumer research suggests significant growth opportunities in the territory with Playboy’s brand and categories of focus.” “Playboy Enterprises has announced the expansion of its global consumer products business into India as part of a partnership with Jay Jay Iconic Brands, a leading fashion and lifestyle Company in India.” “The Indian market today is dominated by consumers under the age of 35, who represent more than 65 percent of the country’s total population and are driving India’s significant online shopping growth. The Playboy brand’s core values of playfulness and exploration resonate strongly with the expressed desires of today’s younger millennial consumers. For us, Playboy was the perfect fit.” “The Playboy international portfolio has been flourishing for more than 25 years in several South Asian markets such as China and Japan. In particular, it has strategically targeted the millennial and gen-Z audiences across categories such as apparel, footwear, home textiles, eyewear and watches.”
https://www.licenseglobal.com/industry-news/playboy-expands-global-footprint-india It looks like they gave COVID the heisman in terms of net damage sustained: “Although Playboy has not suffered any material adverse consequences to date from the COVID-19 pandemic, the business has been impacted both negatively and positively. The remote working and stay-at-home orders resulted in the closure of the London Playboy Club and retail stores of Playboy’s licensees, decreasing licensing revenues in the second quarter, as well as causing supply chain disruption and less efficient product development thereby slowing the launch of new products. However, these negative impacts were offset by an increase in Yandy’s direct-to-consumer sales, which have benefited in part from overall increases in online retail sales so far during the pandemic.” Looks like the positives are long term (Yandy acquisition) and the negatives are temporary (stay-at-home orders).
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921006093/tm213766-1_defa14a.htm This speaks to their ability to maintain a financially solvent company throughout the transition phase to the aforementioned areas. They’d say some fancy shit like “expanded business model to encompass four key revenue streams: Sexual Wellness, Style & Apparel, Gaming & Lifestyle, and Beauty & Grooming.” I hear “we’re just biding our time with these trinkets until those dollar dollar bill y’all markets are fully up and running.” But the truth is these existing revenue streams are profitable, scalable, and rapidly expanding Playboy’s e-commerce segment around the world.
"Even in the face of COVID this year, we've been able to grow EBITDA over 100 percent and revenue over 68 percent, and I expect that to accelerate going into 2021," he said. “Playboy is accelerating its growth in company-owned and branded consumer products in attractive and expanding markets in which it has a proven history of brand affinity and consumer spend.”
Also in the SEC filing, the
Time Frame:
“As we detailed in the definitive proxy statement, the SPAC stockholder meeting to vote on the transaction has been set for February 9th, and, subject to stockholder approval and satisfaction of the other closing conditions, we expect to complete the merger and begin trading on NASDAQ under ticker PLBY shortly thereafter,” concluded Kohn.
The Players: Suhail “The Whale” Rizvi (HMFIC), Ben “The Bridge” Kohn (CEO), “lil” Suying Liu & “Big” Dong Liu (Young-gun China gang). I encourage you to look these folks up. The real OG here is Suhail Rizvi. He’s from India originally and Chairman of the Board for the new PLBY company. He was an early investor in Twitter, Square, Facebook and others. His firm, Rizvi Traverse, currently invests in Instacart, Pinterest, Snapchat, Playboy, and SpaceX. Maybe you’ve heard of them. “Rizvi, who owns a sprawling three-home compound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a 1.65-acre estate in Palm Beach, Florida, near Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, moved to Iowa Falls when he was five. His father was a professor of psychology at Iowa. Along with his older brother Ashraf, a hedge fund manager, Rizvi graduated from Wharton business school.” “Suhail Rizvi: the 47-year-old 'unsocial' social media baron: When Twitter goes public in the coming weeks (2013), one of the biggest winners will be a 47-year-old financier who guards his secrecy so zealously that he employs a person to take down his Wikipedia entry and scrub his photos from the internet. In IPO, Twitter seeks to be 'anti-FB'” “Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia looks like a big Twitter winner. So do the moneyed clients of Jamie Dimon. But as you’ve-got-to-be-joking wealth washed over Twitter on Thursday — a company that didn’t exist eight years ago was worth $31.7 billion after its first day on the stock market — the non-boldface name of the moment is Suhail R. Rizvi. Mr. Rizvi, 47, runs a private investment company that is the largest outside investor in Twitter with a 15.6 percent stake worth $3.8 billion at the end of trading on Thursday (November, 2013). Using a web of connections in the tech industry and in finance, as well as a hearty dose of good timing, he brought many prominent names in at the ground floor, including the Saudi prince and some of JPMorgan’s wealthiest clients.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/technology/at-twitter-working-behind-the-scenes-toward-a-billion-dollar-payday.html Y’all like that Arab money? How about a dude that can call up Saudi Princes and convince them to spend? Funniest shit about I read about him: “Rizvi was able to buy only $100 million in Facebook shortly before its IPO, thus limiting his returns, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” Poor guy :(
He should be fine with the 16 million PLBY shares he's going to have though :)
Shuhail also has experience in the entertainment industry. He’s invested in companies like SESAC, ICM, and Summit Entertainment. He’s got Hollywood connections to blast this stuff post-merger. And he’s at least partially responsible for that whole Twilight thing. I’m team Edward btw.
I really like what Suhail has done so far. He’s lurked in the shadows while Kohn is consolidating the company, trimming the fat, making Playboy profitable, and aiming the ship at modern growing markets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-ipo-rizvi-insight/insight-little-known-hollywood-investor-poised-to-score-with-twitter-ipo-idUSBRE9920VW20131003 Ben “The Bridge” Kohn is an interesting guy. He’s the connection between Rizvi Traverse and Playboy. He’s both CEO of Playboy and was previously Managing Partner at Rizvi Traverse. Ben seems to be the voice of the Playboy-Rizvi partnership, which makes sense with Suhail’s privacy concerns. Kohn said this:
“Today is a very big day for all of us at Playboy and for all our partners globally. I stepped into the CEO role at Playboy in 2017 because I saw the biggest opportunity of my career. Playboy is a brand and platform that could not be replicated today. It has massive global reach, with more than $3B of global consumer spend and products sold in over 180 countries. Our mission – to create a culture where all people can pursue pleasure – is rooted in our 67-year history and creates a clear focus for our business and role we play in people’s lives, providing them with the products, services and experiences that create a lifestyle of pleasure. We are taking this step into the public markets because the committed capital will enable us to accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategies and to more rapidly build our direct to consumer capabilities,” said Ben Kohn, CEO of Playboy.
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” Mr. Kohn continued, “We are actively selling into the Sexual Wellness consumer category, projected to be approximately $400 billion in size by 2024, where our recently launched intimacy products have rolled out to more than 10,000 stores at major US retailers in the United States. Combined with our owned & operated ecommerce Sexual Wellness initiatives, the category will contribute more than 40% of our revenue this year. In our Apparel and Beauty categories, our collaborations with high-end fashion brands including Missguided and PacSun are projected to achieve over $50M in retail sales across the US and UK this year, our leading men’s apparel lines in China expanded to nearly 2500 brick and mortar stores and almost 1000 digital stores, and our new men’s and women’s fragrance line recently launched in Europe. In Gaming, our casino-style digital gaming products with Scientific Games and Microgaming continue to see significant global growth. Our product strategy is informed by years of consumer data as we actively expand from a purely licensing model into owning and operating key high-growth product lines focused on driving profitability and consumer lifetime value. We are thrilled about the future of Playboy. Our foundation has been set to drive further growth and margin, and with the committed capital from this transaction and our more than $180M in NOLs, we will take advantage of the opportunity in front of us, building to our goal of $100M of adjusted EBITDA in 2025.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company Also, according to their Form 4s, “Big” Dong Liu and “lil” Suying Liu just loaded up with shares last week. These guys are brothers and seem like the Chinese market connection. They are only 32 & 35 years old. I don’t even know what that means, but it's provocative.
https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1832415.htm https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mountain-crest-acquisition-corp-ii-002600994.html Y’all like that China money?
“Mr. Liu has been the Chief Financial Officer of Dongguan Zhishang Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., a regional designer, manufacturer and distributor of LED lights serving commercial customers throughout Southern China since November 2016, at which time he led a syndicate of investments into the firm. Mr. Liu has since overseen the financials of Dongguan Zhishang as well as provided strategic guidance to its board of directors, advising on operational efficiency and cash flow performance. From March 2010 to October 2016, Mr. Liu was the Head of Finance at Feidiao Electrical Group Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese manufacturer of electrical outlets headquartered in Shanghai and with businesses in the greater China region as well as Europe.”
Dr. Suying Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., commented, “Playboy is a unique and compelling investment opportunity, with one of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, its proven consumer affinity and spend, and its enormous future growth potential in its four product segments and new and existing geographic regions. I am thrilled to be partnering with Ben and his exceptional team to bring his vision to fruition.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201001005404/en/Playboy-to-Become-a-Public-Company These guys are good. They have a proven track record of success across multiple industries. Connections and money run deep with all of these guys. I don’t think they’re in the game to lose.
I was going to write a couple more paragraphs about why you should have a look at this but really the best thing you can do is read this SEC filing from a couple days ago. It explains the situation in far better detail. Specifically, look to page 137 and read through their strategy. Also, look at their ownership percentages and compensation plans including the stock options and their prices. The financials look great, revenue is up 90% Q3, and it looks like a bright future.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1803914/000110465921005986/tm2034213-12_defm14a.htm#tSHCF I’m hesitant to attach this because his position seems short term, but I’m going to with a warning because he does hit on some good points (two are below his link) and he’s got a sizable position in this thing (500k+ on margin, I think). I don’t know this guy but he did look at the same publicly available info and make roughly the same prediction, albeit without the in depth gambling or cannabis mention. You can also search reddit for ‘MCAC’ and very few relevant results come up and none of them even come close to really looking at this thing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gOvAd6lebs452hFlWWbxVjQ3VMsjGBkbJeXRwDwIJfM/edit?usp=sharing “Also, before you people start making claims that Playboy is a “boomer” company, STOP RIGHT THERE. This is not a good argument. Simply put. The only thing that matters is Playboy’s name recognition, not their archaic business model which doesn’t even exist anymore as they have completely repurposed their business.”
“Imagine not buying $MCAC at a 400M valuation lol. Streetwear department is worth 1B alone imo.”
Considering the ridiculous Chinese growth as a lifestyle brand, he’s not wrong.
Current Cultural Significance and Meme Value: A year ago I wouldn’t have included this section but the events from the last several weeks (even going back to tsla) have proven that a company’s ability to meme and/or gain social network popularity can have an effect. Tik-tok, Snapchat, Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter. They all have Playboy stuff on them. Kids in middle and highschool know what Playboy is but will likely never see or touch one of the magazines in person. They’ll have a Playboy hoodie though. Crazy huh? A lot like GME, PLBY would hugely benefit from meme-value stock interest to drive engagement towards their new business model while also building strategic coffers. This interest may not directly and/or significantly move the stock price but can generate significant interest from larger players who will.
Bull Case: The year is 2025. Playboy is now the world leader pleasure brand. They began by offering Playboy licensed gaming products, including gambling products, direct to consumers through existing names. By 2022, demand has skyrocketed and Playboy has designed and released their own gambling platforms. In 2025, they are also a leading cannabis brand in the United States and Canada with proprietary strains and products geared towards sexual wellness. Cannabis was legalized in the US in 2023 when President Biden got glaucoma but had success with cannabis treatment. He personally pushes for cannabis legalization as he steps out of office after his first term. Playboy has also grown their brand in China and India to multi-billion per year markets. The stock goes up from 11ish to 100ish and everyone makes big gains buying somewhere along the way.
Bear Case: The United States does a complete 180 on marijuana and gambling. President Biden overdoses on marijuana in the Lincoln bedroom when his FDs go tits up and he loses a ton of money in his sports book app after the Fighting Blue Hens narrowly lose the National Championship to Bama. Playboy is unable to expand their cannabis and gambling brands but still does well with their worldwide lifestyle brand. They gain and lose some interest in China and India but the markets are too large to ignore them completely. The stock goes up from 11ish to 13ish and everyone makes 15-20% gains.
TL;DR: Successful technology/e-commerce investment firm took over Playboy to turn it into a porn, online gambling/gaming, sports book, cannabis company, worldwide lifestyle brand that promotes sexual wellness, vetern access, women-ownership, minority-ownership, and “pleasure for all”. Does a successful online team reinventing an antiquated physical copy giant sound familiar? No options yet, shares only for now. $11.38 per share at time of writing. My guess? $20 by the end of February. $50 by EOY. This is not financial advice. I am not qualified to give financial advice. I’m just sayin’ I would personally use a Playboy sports book app while smoking a Playboy strain specific joint and it would be cool if they did that. Do your own research. You’d probably want to start here:
WARNING - POTENTIALLY NSFW - SEXY MODELS AHEAD - no actual nudity though https://s26.q4cdn.com/895475556/files/doc_presentations/Playboy-Craig-Hallum-Conference-Investor-Presentation-11_17_20-compressed.pdf Or here:
https://www.mcacquisition.com/investor-relations/default.aspx Jimmy Chill: “Get into any SPAC at $10 or $11 and you are going to make money.”
STL;DR: Buy MCAC. MCAC > PLBY couple weeks. Rocketship. Moon.
Position: 5000 shares. I will buy short, medium, and long-dated calls once available.
submitted by So I recently picked up Gwent in my search to replace yugioh and I'm thoroughly impressed with the game. I started lurking on the Gwent reddit and cdpr forums and despite mostly positive comments, much to my dismay I see that many Gwent players have no idea how good they really have it. I read complaints about poor balance and lack of diversity in the meta and I can't help but facepalm 🤦♂️ I will address these complaints and others I've seen in the forums so that maybe you can see how well designed Gwent really is.
First a brief history of my experience with card games: I played yugioh semi-competitively for 5 years but power creep has changed how the game is played and it really bears no resemblance to the game I fell in love with so many years back. Since 2016 I've been on the hunt for a game that could fill the void that yugioh left. I started Hearthstone 3 years ago but left after a relatively short span of time due to the terrible amount of RNG and the difficulty of obtaining a top tier deck quickly. From my understanding, Hearthstone has only gone downhill since then. My next game was Magic the Gathering and I'll admit, its a great game, but not without its own faults which ill get into later. I primarily played standard and commander formats of live paper magic. Very little MTGA. I'm also a professional poker player as my sole occupation, so card games are quite close to my heart.
I started Gwent mid October 2020, about 6 weeks back. I climbed to pro rank my first season playing a homebrewed Fruits of Ysgith deck up until about rank 3 where I switched to OH. I now play MO OH, NR Revenants, and SK warriors for my meta decks and mess around with Fruits and Force of Nature when I'm not worried about MMR (which is often since I dont have 4 faction decks yet).
On to addressing complaints:
"The meta has no diversity!" This one is first because I see it most often and it drives me the most crazy. Currently in pro rank I regularly run into: OH both devotion and non, NR shield wall, NR revenants, SK warriors, SK Lippy, SK battle trance, ST symbiosis, ST deadeye ambush, ST precision strike, NG lock down, NG imposter ball, SY congregate, and SY passiflora. All of these decks have a competitive shot except maybe NG but there are posts on here where experienced players pilot even NG to high MMR. That's 14 viable decks at the highest level. For comparison, in yugioh, there are regularly tier 0 formats where 60% of the field is the same OP deck and the other 40% are decks specifically designed to counter that deck. Gwent game design ensures this can't happen since you have to play at least 4 different decks to climb the pro ladder. Even OH with its ridiculous play rate last season was only 12% of the field.
"I want to play X deck but there's not enough support so I lose!" This is a universal issue with card games but Gwent handles it better than most despite having a massive obstacle in the way of doing so. Because we have unmixable factions, CDPR essentially has to create 6 different card pools and try to support each of them while maintaining balance. In yugioh, Konami can release a few sets supporting only a couple archetypes and then drop them and move on since they don't have to worry about faction balance. This means more developed archetypes in Yugioh, but it also means that deck you've been playing for 2 years is now power crept and has no hope of getting support in future sets. Easily 95% of yugioh archetypes are entirely unplayable and will never become playable again. We are very lucky in Gwent to have a lot of support for a lot of decks.
"They changed the effect of my card and now my deck doesn't work!" HA! Try spending hundreds of real money dollars on a deck only to have your main engine banned for the foreseeable future and see your deck turn into fire kindling before your eyes. 'Greatsword is too strong' CDPR- let's make it less strong. Konami- kill it with fire! Not to mention, Gwent has no rotation like Magic and Pokémon do. Rotation makes your cards that are older than a certain time (2 years in Standard Magic) no longer legal for play. So your fun meme deck that wasn't hurting anyone is now illegal for tournament play cause its old and they want you to spend your money on new cards.
"Gwent is too hard for new players!" I won't consider myself a typical "new player" but I was able to go from the tutorial to pro rank in 3 weeks without knowing anyone who plays or watching any streams. For comparison, yugioh is so complicated that even reading the entire rule book will not teach you the majority of the rules. If you don't have people to help you along you will NEVER understand the game fully. Not to mention, Gwent's reward system and semi-synergistic starter decks alow a new player to really experience the true joy of the game even in the beginning. An MTG or yugioh starter deck (that you have to spend real money on) is literally a jumble of seemingly random cards with little to no synergy.
"Net decking is killing Gwent!" Welcome to card games in general. I have no good retort except to say that every card game has it and its not going anywhere. Just because there are decks that everyone knows are good doesn't mean there aren't decks flying under the radar. When everyone is net decking but you're being creative, you will find an edge in knowing how your opponent's deck works and what it contains while they have to play a guessing game with you. In yugioh and magic, we call this playing a rogue strategy and rogue decks often achieve a lot of success. I've seen this referred to as "surprise value" in Gwent and it shouldn't be overlooked.
There are also many parts of Gwent that are very appreciated by the player base and are big parts of what makes the game so great. The reward system is unbelievably generous (i really don't know how CDPR is making money from this game) compared to other online ccgs and compared to paper card games its not even close. To have a meta yugioh deck will often run you $400+ and some formats of Magic are far more expensive than that. The graphics for Gwent are the best I've seen and smaller amounts of RNG make the game far more skillful than competing games.
I hope this little run down helps to make clear how good we really have it with Gwent. No card game is without its flaws but Gwent is easily the most balanced and player friendly game I've been a part of.
tl;dr: Gwent has a couple issues, other games have those issues 10 times worse and then some. Gwent is king.
submitted by !Que Pasa Neng!
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Ayrton Senna Personal Talk: Message for the Future
submitted by Hi everyone, new here. Briefly read through some of the recent posts many of which sound a lot like my own struggle/story.
I'm in my mid 30s and have been losing every dime of my paychecks weekly since I was about 17. It all started with online poker - around the late 90s when sites like PokerStars and PartyPoker started popping up (and not checking I.D. as KYC laws and online gaming regulation wasn't really formed, with poker being a grey area in terms of it's "game of skill" status). Basically back then if you were underage you could just go buy a prepaid visa card from the local store and use that to deposit.
Without realizing consciously that I was starting to develop a pretty expensive habit. I spent most of my late teens and early 20s selling weed and working shitty jobs. The urge to gamble grew and my situation got really dark as I began stealing. First it was stuff like borrowing money from friends and girlfriends without thinking or caring about how I would pay them back. Then I began finding stuff around the house I figured I could sell without my parents knowing. Making e-check deposits on gambling sites with an empty bank account.
Once e-check deposits became a thing I basically just ran around opening new bank accounts once one was deep in the red and just ignoring the calls/collection mail. Eventually there were no more banks that I could open an account with. Then one day I found my parents checkbook sitting on the living room table.
In my mind, I could just do a quick $100 deposit, win at least $100 and get it back in-hand before their bank statement came in the mail. Or at worse just act like I didn't know anything about it when I would inevitably be asked about the strange charge. So I play with the $100, end up losing it before I saw any profits and decided, well, we're already in deep shit when they call the transaction company associated with the charge and get the full story.
So I deposit another $200 to remedy the situation...
and then $300... $500... and within 3 days I had made $4700 in charges on their account. A day or two after the deposits kept getting declined I came downstairs with my parents sitting on the sofa, bank statements in hand and said "Son have a seat we need to talk about something". Before I could make it to my seat I was already balling my eyes out. I explained that every deposit was an attempt to fix the previous mistake ect ect and it was really the only time where what I had done and how I was living finally hit as reality.
So fast forward 15 years later and here I am, still living with my parents. I have no real possessions or hobbies because i've sold everything of value to gamble along the years. Doing food delivery in a car that has 430,000 miles on it, working for companies that allow me to cash out my earnings on a daily basis. Unable to save a simple $2000 for an old beater replacement car before the one I have takes a dump on me. I literally have less than $500 to my name and I just got my stimulus money 4 days ago. I don't know what the hell i'm supposed to do to get on the right track and start making some progress in life. My friends and family have the patience of saints - that and I suppose they just feel bad or basically look down on me. Just last night I deposited $100 for slots and hit a $900 spin... but what do I do? Crank up my bet and watch it all wither away within a couple hours.
As I finish this wall of text I just shrug and tell myself "All I can do is just avoid gambling, avoid the triggers" but i've been here more times than I can even remember. This is painful. I hate it. I feel like a selfish, bored, simple, and unhappy person.
submitted by It really helps me if you check the original article & more similar at
https://jb-dev.net/ !!!
https://preview.redd.it/336cy55x9pg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=c89b35c152f61892f277a28203e61f192a86d260 In January 2019, Drodo Studio’s
Dota Auto Chess mod became insanely popular. Many companies (including household names like Valve, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard) rushed to release their own versions.
It seemed like the beginning of something big like MOBA or Battle Royale. But it has been more than a year now and the hype seems to have vanished completely. As quickly as it rose, it went away…
This is the first on a series of articles where we will analyze the autochess genre. Here we will be exploring the genre’s history, its current market situation and its audience. And also, what are the core design issues that
autochess suffers and that no one has been able to solve yet.
u/JB: For this article I’m teaming up with my mate Victor Freso,
one of my most talented folks at Pixel Noire Games, who helped me review all the games. We also had feedback of ~300 highly engaged players from the different autochess reddit communities, which participated in an online poll whose results are available here. They’re especially thanked at the end of the article. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
This wasn’t the first time that a
mod got the spotlight and ended up becoming the foundation of a genre. It happened in several major, industry-defining cases before (some of which are Team Shooters, MOBAs, Battle Royale…). But on some of these cases events unfolded differently. So we identify 3 distinctive
eras related to the evolution of the industry:
1st Era (2000s): Assimilation
The company whose original software had been modded (or had a
close enough game, like Valve) moved quickly to absorb the successful mods and turn them into even more successful products.
Since at that point creating a major game release was very complex (required an expensive development, publishing deals and an infrastructure to distribute the product), the deal was profitable for both sides. But it meant the
dissolution of the identity of the original creator team, which became embedded in the bigger company culture.
Team Fortress (1999) was originally a Quake mod. And Counter-Strike (2000) started out as a fan-made mod on the Half Life engine. Both games (and creators) were quickly absorbed by Valve. 2nd Era (2010s): Integration
By this time, the previous era model still was going on… but the gaming industry had significatively grown a lot and
it was also possible for smaller or even new companies to lure the original developers, and use the mod as a proof for commercial success in order to secure funding and develop it as a full title.
The main characteristic of this era is that the original developers were able to keep a bigger share of control and relevance, rather than being integrated as just another gear on a bigger machine, because the companies they joined built their own identity around that key product.
This was the case of Riot Games: They were able to raise enough money for the creation of their company through family and angel investors, and then hire some of the original creators of DOTA, and then created League of Legends.
![img](1vsle6y3apg61 " Defense of the Ancients (DotA), the foundational title for the MOBA genre, appeared in 2003 as a fan-made custom scenario of Warcraft 3. Foreseeing commercial potential on a full game based on the concept, Riot games and Valve both battled for the Dota IP and the original developers, eventually releasing rival titles League of Legends and Dota2. Interestingly, Blizzard (owners of Warcraft 3) tried to replicate the success without the mod creators in Heroes of the Storm (2015), which hasn’t been as successful as the other two. ")
A similar case happened with
battle royale, which also started in 2013 as a successful
DayZ mod created by the modder nicknamed
PlayerUnknown. Later, it was transformed into a full product through the acquisition of the developer by a korean company (which would later be renamed as the PUBG Corporation, again showing how the company grew around the game rather than assimilating it).
Interestingly, this genre already hints what would happen with Auto Chess, since Fortnite wasn’t involved in any way with the original creators. They just copied the concept. Fortnite was a product stuck in a kind of
development hell (had been 6 years in the works). As the game was getting close to the release, the developers became impressed by PUBG’s success, so they created a quick Battle Royale spin-off which became insanely popular and eventually
ate the rest of the game.
![img](3b6l2rx6apg61 " Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (2017), foundational title of the modern battle royale genre, is the successor of PlayerUnknown’s DayZ: Battle Royale, a popular mod for DayZ (which on itself is a mod of ArmA3, making it a mod of a mod lol). The success of PUBG inspired Fortnite (a title on the later stages of a troubled development at the time) to spin towards that genre, becoming PUBG‘s main competitor. ")
3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation
In all the cases presented previously, the newborn genre ended up in the release of one or two titles which accumulated most of the business. But this hasn’t been the case here.
In Autochess,
the newborn genre has been quickly fragmented into a big list of competitors. Some are standalone games (like
DOTA Underlords or
Autochess: Origins), but there’s also several
service-model games which released their
autochess mode as well (like
Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds or
TeamFight Tactics, which at the end of the day is a side-game mode of League of Legends).
This creates an interesting precedent, which I believe will define future cases where an innovative new game concept appears:
The hot idea will be cloned very fast because
today the main bottleneck in the industry is having an innovative design that generates player interest and engagement. By 2020, it’s way easier to create and distribute a game, there are way more developers hungry for a hit than ever before, and a lot of
service-model games with short development cycles always looking for something juicy for their next update… so new ideas becoming red oceans fast will be the norm.
For sure, this won’t affect the ability of small developers and
modders to innovate, but it will affect their ability to leverage that to become successful on an independant level, before they get cloned.
Dota Auto Chess, was a Dota 2 mod which obtained massive popularity. After a failed acquisition from Valve (owners of Dota), the mod developers (Drodo Studios) went to create the mobile standalone Auto Chess: Origins, while still maintaining the PC version linked to Valve. Meanwhile, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft and many other companies developed and released their own autobattlers at a record time, downgrading the genre creators to just another competitor. And ultimately,
they haven’t fixed the core issues of the original game, which separates it from a true hyper-successful product like MOBA. MARKET STATUS
Because of the rain of clones, it’s hard to map all the autochess games on the market. It doesn’t help that some of them are
available in both PC and Mobile (playable in PC, Mac, Android and iOS), and also they’re exclusive to
different PC stores (
Dota Underlords is only on Steam,
TFT is on Riot’s LoL launcher, and Autochess Origins is only at the Epic Store…).
And if that wasn’t enough,
the Auto Chess mod in DOTA2 is still very active and has no signs that it’s going to be dying soon. It’s still being regularly updated, and presumably still profitable: Some months ago they added a battle pass system, with its revenue shared between Valve and Drodo.
https://preview.redd.it/081hvwjdapg61.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af2ba4751130a95b422ca1b7fd8c346029ab74 What’s interesting is that
none of the contenders has been able to become massively successful in terms of monetization, at least not in terms comparable to even a second or third tier MOBA. And while there are definitively different tiers of following among these titles (led by Riot Games’ TeamFight Tactics), it seems that
none of them has been able to gather under its banner a significant amount of players, mobile downloads or Twitch Views…
Sources: AppAnnie (mobile metrics), TwitchMetrics (twitch) So ultimately, we’re dividing the
autochess market into 3 categories: Squires, Would-be Kings and Peasants.
- Squires: Rather than standalone games, these are side-modes of already successful products. Under this category we would list the Battlegrounds mode in Hearthstone, or League of Legends’ TFT, and maybe even the original DOTA Autochess mod. While for sure they’ll have their own dedicated audience that only plays those modes, for most players it’s just a nice and fresh activity integrated within a broader game experience. The squires are the ones that have achieved the biggest success among the autochess genre because they don’t suffer as much backlash from the lack of gameplay depth inherent to the genre, which is harmful for the long term retention: Even if the mode eventually becomes a bit shallow, players have many other things to play, and thus are retained. As a consequence, these games can still monetize significatively by selling renewals of their Battle Passes every new season. Not enough to make them successful on the degree that was expected… but at least it’s something. Other than bringing an additional source of revenue, these modes were useful to their core games: They generated player interest by providing innovative gameplay. Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds was an amazing addition to the CCG genre, and made a lot of people come back to the game to discover the new mode and reengage.
The gameplay of TeamFight Tactics (slow tempo, no team coordination, decreased attention requirement…) makes it a nice relief mode to play between LOL matches, which is its purpose in the foreseeable future. If there ever was an intention to make it a standalone game, it vanished together with the player interest on autochess… - Would-be Kings: These are the other two top dogs of the category. They were supposed to rule… but that looking at the numbers they don’t really seem to have ever lifted off. Under this category we would list Auto Chess: Origins and DOTA Underlords. The problem is that their standalone approach means that they suffer the most of the design issues of the genre that we’ve presented in the last section of this article (i.e. flat complexity, lack of mastery depth, lack of progression and rotative meta…). That means that they lost a lot of population over time, and therefore their Battle Pass renewal isn’t as effective at generating revenue : (
DOTA Underlords is an extremely polished product in terms of graphics, character design and UX, and yet another proof that Valve devs really know how to do great games. Too bad they aren’t as good at releasing third installments... - Peasants: Here we would list the myriad of other autochess follower titles that entered the battlefield, each achieving a different degree of success. While some may actually be profitable, what we can be sure about is that none of them has reached any significant numbers or anything close to the reach that brought industry attention.
THE AUDIENCE
We are of the belief that you can’t talk about a game and not talk about who plays it, and that players say more about a game than analyzing all its features and mechanics. So with this in mind we collected answers from ~300 autochess players (check the
raw data here). After examining their responses, we’ve identified
3 main player profiles (the comments on each profile are literal):
https://preview.redd.it/zdh1jripapg61.png?width=934&format=png&auto=webp&s=162eb3f8b98024c0a69eb889ca26e7463fdd776c - Patricks, gamers looking for a competitive-but-idle experience that doesn’t require full attention and it’s easily reconcilable with their functional adult life.
- Grizzlies, competitive players that struggle with fast paced games that demand a high actions per minute ratio and quick reflexes (like MOBAs or competitive shooters).
- Warmasters, highly competitive players that enjoy more the area of strategy (setting up goals and planning how to achieve them) rather than tactics (skillful execution of actions and micromanagement).
What these profiles have in common, other than being hardcore gamers and having a big interest in competitive games, is the fact that
they enjoy the lack of micromanagement, and the demand of reflexes and dexterity of
autochess.
This is quite interesting, considering that the genre foundation is so close to MOBAs, which are extremely demanding on those aspects. Overall it seems that they belong to audiences below the MOBA umbrella which are currently being alienated by the bulk of ‘younger and dexterity focused’ players.
And when it comes to platforms, it seems that even though the barrier between the classic gaming platforms and mobile is progressively disappearing, the genre is still mainly focused on PC: Out of the ~300 players that answered, 50% said that they play exclusively on PC, 25% played primarily on Mobile, and the remaining 25% played in both.
https://preview.redd.it/1frwgvrtapg61.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=3602c6a760664333236a2fddbc189fbab3ee3fc1 Players said that they enjoy the
focus of the game in planification, as opposed to the focus on execution and performance of MOBAs. And when asked about their main points of frustration, they pointed out 2 main topics: 1.-
The strong luck factor that has a strong impact on making you win or lose regardless on how well you played. 2.- The fact that the
game eventually becomes shallow and repetitive, fueled by the fact updates were unexciting and not rotating the meta.
Surprised by the fact that
players mention randomness as a factor of both enjoyment and frustration? Don’t be! Competitive players tend to have a love-and-hate relationship with luck, because they tend to consider that external factors outside of skills (money spent, better draw…)
stole their well deserved victory.
And it’s even more frustrating in
autochess, because there’s a strong snowball effect: Players that obtain a big advantage early on in the game become hard to catch later on. Which means that
a few bad or good draws early on can decide the rest of the match.
There hasn’t been a single feature more criticised in Magic: The Gathering than the randomness of drawing mana. And yet, luck it’s part of what makes MTG stand out compared to other CCGs: For experienced players, it introduces uncertainty and the need to take risks and gamble, like they’d do in poker. And for rookies, it allows beating someone that has better skills and has a better deck, if Lady Luck is on their side. Won’t happen often, but it will feel awesome when it does. Like a friend likes to say: The best feeling in MTG is to draw a mana when you really need it. And the worst? To draw it when you didn’t.
This goes to say that in
autochess, perhaps the power of luck needs to be reviewed, but it would be a bad decision to completely remove luck from the equation.
DESIGN CHALLENGES
In
this awesome DoF article, Giovanni Ducati already pointed out the two main problems that the games in this genre need to solve to achieve real success:
Bad long term retention and low monetization.
To these issues we would add a third one, which is
bad marketability: Contrary to their big brothers League of Legends and DOTA2,
these games haven’t been able to achieve high organic downloads (at least not to be able to generate significant revenue through
soft monetization mechanics). What’s even worse is that all these games, their themes and target audience are quite close to RPG and Strategy, which are genres with some of the highest CPIs on the market. So they need top-of-the-class retention and monetization to get a high enough LTV to scale up.
But
why do these games fail at keeping players entertained for a long time? And
why don’t they monetize enough? Here’s what we think:
Flat Complexity & Progression
You have some games out there which have a strong entry barrier due to being quite complicated to grasp. But for those that can deal with the numbers and stats, the depth will keep them entertained for months and years. This is the case in most RPGs and 4X strategy games. And then you have hypercasual games, which are simple and
plug and play. So they generate a great early engagement, but are too shallow to keep users hooked for a long time.
As a genre, Autochess games are in the middle ground:
they have a high entry barrier, but also lack the complexity to keep players engaged for a long time… As a general rule, games with long retention tend to follow Bushnell’s Law of being
easy to learn and difficult to master. They achieve that by having what we call an
unfolding experience: They appear simpler at the beginning (not necessarily
easy), but require thousands of hours of practice to master.
An example of this are games that
level lock most of the game complexity, so the player understands and masters only a set starter mechanics. And then, progressively unlock new modes and demand more specialized builds and gameplay, repeating the cycle several times to keep the game always interesting while attempting to avoid being overwhelming.
In World of Warcraft, character depth is huge. But this complexity is unfolded progressively, forcing the player to spend time mastering each skill and activity as they level up, before moving further. Another approach to the same idea are competitive games focused on mechanical ability, dexterity or micromanagement. Like
CS:GO or
Rocket League. They may
unlock all the mechanics from the beginning, but a newbie player will only be able to focus and manage some of them, and then progressively discover and master the rest in an organic way. Rocket League hides its complexity by matchmaking early players with others of a similar skill. This makes beginner players viable even if they grasp only the basic mechanics. But, as they climb further, they’ll face rivals that take those basic skills for granted and the player will need to master more challenging techniques to keep up. League of Legends and
Overwatch are actually a combination of both: The game first introduces the player to a small selection of heroes which progressively gets expanded, while at the same time having an insane mastery depth that requires a high APM and reflexes, team coordination and thousands of hours of practice.
Contrary to any of those examples,
Autochess games throw everything at you from the beginning: Character Skills, Synergies, Unit Upgrade, Gold Management, Items… It’s a lot to swallow. And there’s not even enough time to read what each thing does before the timer runs out.
This creates a complex, overwhelming first impression that drives many players out. But that’s quantity, not depth. Once you’ve gone through that traumatic starting phase, you’ve grasped all the mechanics and you know which team builds are dominating on the meta, it’s just a matter of making it happen by taking the right decisions and adapting to a few key draws.
Eventually, unless luck is really against you, your skills won’t be challenged and you won’t have new mechanics to master. At that point,
winning will be based more on the knowledge of the content database and luck rather than your planning and strategic ability. And that’s boring.
So ultimately,
these games are hard to grasp for a newbie, but also lack the ability to keep players interested for a very long time since they eventually run out of new features and mechanics to discover and master.
Unexciting Updates, Lack of Collection
On top of that, autochess games seem to have a hard time adding content which reawakens player interest and makes churned ones come back.
The DAU trend that we expect on a long term retention game: A decreasing trend of players until reaching a stagnation stage. At that point, a big update (or new season) is required to attract and reengage users back with new content. This is the model we would see on Fortnite or Hearthstone, but it’s not what we see in most autochesses. On this topic, perhaps the one that has put the most effort is Riot’s TFT. Each season update, the game releases a new series of heroes, synergies, items and rebalances, as well as a big bunch of cosmetics. This generates a
short lived boost on revenue (due primarily to players buying the pass) and downloads, but ultimately
nothing that really moves the needle in a relevant way.
‘
Why seasonal updates don’t work?‘, you may be asking. Part of the reason is that TFT, as well as every major contender
do not include elements of content progression or collection. Instead, they all stick to the
roguelike approach of the original mod: Players have access to the same set of units, and build their inventory exclusively during the match.
While at first this seems a good idea, since it keeps the game
fair in a similar way to MOBAs, it’s oblivious to the fact that new units do not offer the same amount of gameplay depth as in
League of Legends.
In LoL, a new unit means weeks or even months of practice until mastering timing, range and usage of the skills, how they interact with every other champion, etc… In comparison,
in TFT the new content can be fully explored in just a bunch of matches, both because the new content doesn’t offer that much depth to start with and because it’s available from the moment the player gets the update.
By lacking content progression and collection,
autochesses miss the opportunity to create long term objectives after an update, more innovative mechanics and less repetitiveness. As a consequence, they have it really hard to
hype players on updates.
Big ‘Snowball Effect’
In game design,
the snowball effect refers to the situation where obtaining an advantage or dominance generates further conditions that almost invariably means winning the match. As you can guess,
on competitive games this effect can generate a bad experience, especially when the divergence starts early on: The player that obtained the early advantage will keep on increasing the advantage and
curbstomp the rest.
For example, this can happen on a
Civilization game if a player gets ahead of the rest acquiring key resource territories, and uses them to achieve a greater progress in tech and income at a faster pace than the rest. Or in
League of Legends if a team scores a bunch of early kills and levels up, becoming more able at scoring even more kills…
In this match of Age of Empires 2, the red player (Aztecs) managed to decimate the blue player (Turks) military units early on. Since without an army it was impossible for the blue player to secure enough resources to perform a comeback, for the next 2 hours the blue player was in a pointless, hopeless match. Kudos for not abandoning, though! Autochess games suffer greatly from this effect, due to the following reasons:
- Resources lead to victories, victories lead to resources As you know, in autochess each player builds a team based on successive battles. Better battle performance will grant more gold, which is the resource used to buy units, perform shop rolls, etc… Similar to the cases we’ve already explained, this means that players that achieve early dominance will be able to to obtain more gold, use it to get better units and get more victories and gold, therefore increasing their team power faster than the rest. ‘But players can be lucky or unlucky, generating a factor that compensates for the advantage of having more resources early on‘, you may be considering. Unfortunately, this is a flawed logic, because of 2 main reasons: (1) Having more resources means more adaptability: The dominant players will be able to leverage on them to re-adapt their team, therefore outperforming the rest on a randomness-driven scenario. (2) Resources allow to buy more rolls, which diminishes the deviation generated by each individual roll.
![img](4kbmxiqhbpg61 " TeamFight Tactics attempts to decrease the snowball effect by introducing Carousels: rounds where all players pick a character from a list, and where the players that are losing (i.e. have less health) get to choose first. While this decreases the issue, it doesn’t really solve it… It just makes that smart players aim to lose on purpose at the beginning so they can get the better pick and generate the snowball slightly later on. ")
- Luck factor. The previous point goes into maintaining and increasing dominance once it has been achieved early on, but another source of frustration is that luck is a huge factor in achieving early dominance. This means that your strategic skills and smarts can be completely invalidated by a couple of bad rolls at the beginning of the match. And there’s nothing that competitive players hate more than having their match stolen by factors outside the pure clash of abilities.
As an antithesis, Poker also has resource management, and luck factor determines the victory (on a specific round). But unlike
Autochess, resources can’t override luck, and early victories don’t affect the later chance of winning.
Excessive Match Length
Compared to PC, on mobile is much harder to keep the player focused for a long period of time on a single session. And having a very long minimum session kind of goes against the premise of
being able to play anywhere which is a primary strength of mobile as a gaming platform. This is a problem for autochess games since a single match can last for 30-45 minutes of synchronous, nonstop gameplay.
![img](4ed79ecnbpg61 " The knockout mode in Dota Underlords aims to make the game more accessible by skipping the slow beginning of the match (you start with a pre-setup army), and by simplifying the health and fusion systems. This shortens the matches to ~15 minutes, which is still too long for mobile, but better than 30. The problem is that it also increases the snowball effect, since the match has less turns to allow comebacks, and makes any mistake (or a bad roll) way more punishing. ")
‘Isn’t the solution just make the match shorter?’, you’re probably wondering. Unfortunately, there are several reasons that make this more challenging to the core design than what it seems:
- Because in autochess the player builds its team from scratch, at the beginning of each match there are several turns to setup team foundations. Removing these early decisions severely decreases the teambuilding possibilities, decreasing overall depth.
- Also, each setup phase between clashes requires a minimum time to think and perform the actions. In the last turns of a match, the game can become quite demanding on thinking and input speed.
- Matches require a minimum amount of turns to compensate the weight of a single lucky/unlucky roll over the chances to win. Because the possible units for teambuilding appear on random rolls, the less turns there are the more luck factor the game will suffer, and as a consequence the less important the player’s strategic skills will be.
- And if there are few turns, there are also less chances for comebacks. Because it means that players will have less setup phases to adapt and catch a player that has obtained an early advantage.
- Finally, since the match involves 8 players, it requires a minimum of turns so that they all can fight between each other… Nevertheless, I don’t consider this a critical issue because Dota has been able to change this specific point on the knockout mode without sacrificing too much in terms of depth.
Soft Approach to Monetization
PC/Console approach to free-to-play is generally soft (i.e. primarily based on cosmetics, avoid pay-to-win…), while mobile tends to be quite hardcore in comparison. The
softness of PC monetization is even more core to companies such as
Valve and especially
Riot Games, to which the
“no monetization bs” is part of the brand values. This would be very hard to change without harming their reputation.
Same as in most autochess games, in TeamFight Tactics the players can only pay for different cosmetics and for a Battle Pass. Without the massively huge and engaged audience of League of Legends, this monetization approach isn’t able to generate meaningful revenue. This is not exclusively because we
mobile-first devs are a ruthless wallstreet folk which will use every dirty trick in the book to get a bit extra money… but also because
mobile games are locked in competition for paid installs. This requires us to get as much revenue as possible from users, as fast as possible, in order to reinvest into players to keep on growing or avoid withering.
The business model of
League of Legends or
Fortnite is based on their extreme popularity: They already have massive amounts of highly engaged active users, so their strategy is to keep them playing and have a monetization system that, while doesn’t make as much money from the players as it could do on the short term, generates a decent amount of revenue over a longer period of time.
Games that have this soft f2p approach have it very hard to reach enough ARPPU to make paid users profitable, given the insanely high mobile CPIs. This may not be an issue to big IPs and games that are able to bring many organic players (
Fortnite, League of Legends…), but it is a big issue for those that can’t attract such a big number of players due to their organic appeal.
Due to its core characteristics (strategic, number-based, complex…),
Autochess is unlikely to be a massive appeal product, and therefore won’t fit into the cosmetics model. It’s a game that will have a smaller audience of highly engaged players, and therefore will require a more aggressive monetization to reach similar results.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The history of the
autochess genre serves as an example of the risks of design endogamy: The devsphere rushed to clone Auto Chess, and before a year all the major contenders were in the board. But that speed came at a cost: None of these projects has brought the concept much further than its original conception, and in doing so they haven’t solved any of the core issues.
https://preview.redd.it/iw82bogsbpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a197aa1fcb9ace73d6795103d20a4101ce7ddb5 The folks at Riot games developed the TeamFight Tactics
in less than 5 months. This allowed them to
release while the hype was still at its peak… but it also meant it added just a couple of improvements, and it’s otherwise
very similar to the original Auto Chess mod.
After seeing all these projects fail to meet the big expectations that were placed on them, the question is if
perhaps the best approach was to avoid rushing, and instead tackle the genre with a title that is not a clone, but rather a more groomed, accessible and innovative successor of the original idea.
In our next article on this series will make an attempt to see how such a game could be, rethinking the spirit and fresh design ideas of autochess to solve the issues mentioned above.
(May take a while though, I want to focus on smaller articles for a couple of months…) Meanwhile, if you want to read more about this genre, we suggest you these awesome articles from the folks at DoF:
Why Auto-Chess can’t monetize – and how to fix that and
How Riot can turn TFT into a billion dollar game Special Thanks to…
These articles wouldn’t have been possible with the collaboration of
~300 members of the reddit communities of the different auto chess games who provided us with feedback and data. You folks have been incredible solving all our doubts. One thing that this genre has is some of the most awesome players around.
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