The Marvel Snap Situation is a Dumpster Fire | The Snap Chat Ep. 138

What is going on with the state of Marvel Snap? Join Cozy Snap, Alexander Coccia, and guest RegisKillbin as they chat about this and more on this episode of The Snap Chat and every week as they discuss all things Marvel Snap.

You’ve been listening to The Snap Chat. Keep the conversation going on x.com/ACozyGamer and x.com/AlexanderCoccia. Until next time, happy snapping!

Transcript

Cozy: 0:00

Is going on guys, and welcome back to another episode of the Snapchat. If you guys have, uh, been under a rock. There's a lot of controversy right now in Marvel Snap, and, and we've decided just to look past it and just focus on the good the happy. Heck. Can we get through it guys? No, today I've got on Regis and Alex and we're gonna talk about what's going on in Marvel Snap. If you guys want the happy go lucky, good stuff. Come next week.'cause you're definitely not gonna get that today. We don't even have subjects actually. We just got all on a call and started talking and so that's a bit of what you guys. We're going to get today for the Snapchat as we discuss what has been a catastrophe, uh, to put it lightly of a week for not only second dinner, but Snap itself. Let's jump in. Alright guys, so I've decided to form the, uh, our version of the Avengers here. And, and really that just means bringing in my, my biggest hero in the middle here, like the Brady Bunch. Regis has been so, uh, kind to join us on today's episode of the Snapchat and it's gonna look a little bit different. Today. We have just one subject and I don't even know the name of the subject. It's just maybe what the f is going on. Marvel Snap second dinner featuring Regis Gilbert. I'm gonna give you the four, buddy. What's up? I'm glad to have you.

Regis: 1:11

Uh, this is like the best sandwich ever. By the way. I'm like the beautiful, the, the meat in the middle of the sandwich and I, it's, it's a great spot to be. I think it's called the New Era of Snap, because that's what they teased. We were like entering a new era of Snap and then like the first thing that happened is this kid Omega fiasco. So I've been calling it

Alex: 1:31

the new era, and as always, you're already coming out firing Amen. Like no mercy, right off the red. Wow.

Cozy: 1:37

Sorry, sorry. Yeah. Well, as always, I'm joined by, uh, Mr. Alex Koji here. Yeah. Today guys, obviously, uh, Alex and I always have like tremendous timing of, of having a Snapchat, and then something happens within 30 seconds after it's posted, and then we get to wait a whole week. Uh, but the good news is the Snap Team waited a whole week to give responses, and I thought we were gonna have a lot more I don't know, maybe good news to talk about, but No. You know what guys? We've done so many subjects a lot on Alex's side of like, how's Snap doing? We hate Snap, we love Snap. What's going on with Snap? And I just, I'm done doing those subjects, so we wanna put it all together and just have an open forum. Uh, I've had a lot of words to talk about it myself. Uh, I've been casting this week. And so dealing with my own, just kind of firestorm, but keeping tabs with it. And again, my, my slogan, uh, re just put together a, a great tweet that I, I wanna read here in a second. But my slogan was, I I've never been so shocked by something, uh, that I completely expected. And I think that sums up what my thoughts were on Snap. For those that don't know, we're gonna quickly just talk about what happened, the situation that happened, and then we'll go into the open floor ness to talk about it. Now, first of all we had high voltage boys, we had, uh, another limited time game mode. To start off, do you guys like these, uh, do you like high voltage, uh, just, uh, at a bare minimum, not even the game mode now, but I guess these limited time, like, what is your thoughts on those? Read? Just Alex.

Regis: 2:55

I like, I liked the original high voltage, but to be honest, I haven't played this one a single game. I, I just bought Kid Omega to make a video and complain about it, and then I haven't touched it. So I have no idea if I like overdrive or not. Uh, I wasn't as big of a fan of sanctum, to some extent it's. Playing them is an obligation to unlock this stuff. And then once I'm done, I'm kind of done, you know, because most of my time is like making the actual videos or editing the videos or whatever. So, you know, I, I think they're pretty fun. High voltage is nice. It's like casual and easygoing. I have no idea what this one's like though. I heard I had a lot of frustrations,

Alex: 3:28

okay. Alex? I liked it. Honestly, I think it's all right. I think the limited, uh, time game modes are fun. I like that. Like even with sanctum sanctorum you have like guardians being relevant. Uh, with this one, pretty much nothing's relevant'cause no one's playing it. But what I will tell you though is like, I do appreciate the high voltage game mode. Even if, just for like, I'm busy on the weekend, I just wanna pound out some, some weekend missions to get my credits and stuff like that. I do like them, I do like them generally speaking, but I've only like Regis engaged enough in the, uh, the current mode to get a specific thing. Not Kid Omega. I did not get Kid Omega. I had to get the rocket because that's exactly how I feel right now.

Cozy: 4:03

It is funny'cause Alex did like the preview on his side. Last time we were just, and like the game mode just went live. It was within minutes and we go into the game mode together and we didn't do the math, like none of the numbers, but we go to the reward shop and we're like talking, we're like kind of hyped up as we usually are and I'm just like staring at this 50 K number and I was like, this kid, something seems off here. But then I was like, I'm just not understanding the, the currency system because it wouldn't be a mobile game or Marvel Snap if there wasn't like 19 new currencies and new ways to buy. And then we get rid of currencies. But then they still exist, but they're called portal polls now. Long story short, guys, new card came out, new mode came out. High voltage, limited time game mode and in there and typically in limited time game mode, we get one, two up to now four cards, I guess in sanctum, uh, that you can get by playing the game. Now these games, and I'm gonna call Mar Marvel, Snap, a mobile game. That's what it is. Uh, you typically can use money to get rewards fast in mobile games or you can use time that has almost always been exclusively the thing with mobile games. And in this particular high voltage, uh, second dinner here has put a card of Kid Omega. We've talked about this card a lot leading up to it. He's been data mine now for a while at 50,000 Volts. And Rudy, just, I'm gonna pass it to you here just so people can understand 50,000 volts, how much that is whether they watch this. We have a lot of people that don't even play the Snap, uh, Marvel Snap anymore, that watch the Snapchat. So how much is 50,000 volts? How much do you have to play?

Regis: 5:28

It's a lot. It's, it's in it's impossible for the average player to get 50,000 volts. And I, I think it's like technically possible from what I understand, for someone to earn it for free. If you play like eight to 10 hours a day, give a pretty good win rate and you do all the missions perfectly on reset, I think it's technically possible, but that's like 0.002% of the player base or something. No one can play Marvel staff for eight hours a day at a normal life or scenario 10 hours, hours a day. Yeah. I mean, we're full. It's our job to play Marvel staff. We wouldn't even come close, right? Like we have to work on other things, other aspects of the job. All I really know is like, I wanted to make a video on it as quickly as possible. So I like always, I normally, I like buy the mission refreshes or whatever to get the card as quickly as possible in high voltage. Uh, this time you could just outright buy it with gold. So I clicked the button to buy it and I was like, I think it was 9,000 gold. I don't, that's over a hundred dollars, right? I can never keep up with a stupid currency. Conversions, it never makes sense, but it's like over a hundred dollars to get Kid Omega. So I was just like, my jaw hit the floor. I was like, what on Earth? So, you know, I buy the coat, excuse me, I make the video real fast and I just like complained in the first two minutes of video. Like this is completely insane. Outrageous price totals. If you want to skip the line, basically to buy the card, which, uh, you know, not everybody has to skip the line. You can discount the card by playing, but the rate at which you earn volts is so abysmally low that any discount, it's still gonna cost the normal player like$80 or$60 or$40. Uh, and it's like anchored at such a high freaking price compared to normal card that even any discounts don't get it to a reasonable level. I, I, I feel insane by the way, that like normal cards at Marvel Snap are expensive. It's a digital card that costs like 50 or$60. Effectively, like I, I think it's insane that we've anchored that as like an okay level. That is just still absurd to me at the base and that this pushed things to a whole nother tier. And I, it just blows my mind that we're talking about a hundred dollars digital card in a card game. It's, uh, I, it's just like, we've just completely lost it as far as I'm concerned. So I dunno if that answer to your question about how much it costs too much is the answer. It's, it's insane to me. I don't know.

Alex: 7:45

I think that the conversion is like 8,000 gold to a hundred American dollars. So it's even more than a hundred. For me it's like, I think it was like$180 Canadian or something. But our exchange rate sucks. And I will say that I think someone did some napkin math and was suggesting that even with like the reward track and everything, you'd have to win like 300 games a day or something. So stupid. I don't know the exact number, but I remember reading it being like, yeah, I saw that. No, like that can't be right. And sure enough, like there was the math and I was like, 300 wins a day. Like what are we doing? It ultimately Kid Omega, despite how good it may or may not be, is by far the most expensive card ever released in Marvel Snap.

Cozy: 8:21

And it's, there's so many conversations go into this.'cause one of the things we're talking about is this whole situation, but then also just all the merits that surround it and the breadcrumbs that have led to this in the new era of Snap moving forward. Yeah, as you point out, a hundred dollars is absurd, especially as you start comparing it to anything else in life, right? Or like AAA games and all that stuff. Like, that's always been a thing, you know, skins, variants, that's its own thing.'cause that's, you don't have to get those are things that you can, you know, I've always been like a cosmetic, like whatever. I still think they're too much, but I, I've always been kind of on the side of cosmetics are not, I'm not too you know, concerned about, but a hundred dollars for your card that there's no other way to get it. The tokens can't get it as far as I can concern and correct me if I'm wrong, this is not going to like Snap packs immediately or anything like that from what we know. I think it's 30 days.

Regis: 9:08

Yeah, 30 days. So it's basically exclusive to spending gold or unlocking via volts for a, a window. So basically if you whale out, you have 30 days to own people with this card because you spent money, then everybody else. Frankly it's still expensive again.'cause Snap packs are expensive. They take a lot of work and or money to, to get, but you know, then it is at least accessible to the wider population for a slight discount. Right. But it's, it's the concerns that, like, are you netting, uh, an advantage is this really super pay to win and super expensive pay to win. I, I, for a while there it looked like Kid Omega was gonna be like scary good, like can best made this deck that looked insane. The data has leveled on it a little bit. It doesn't look like totally scary broken. It still looks really strong and good. So like that was a little bit of a pressure relief. But of course this is a precedent that we don't want to see and like, this is obviously, if it works for them, they're gonna do it again in the future and maybe make the card even scarier and even better. So, you know, we just have to be careful on this and really fight back and push now less, it gets worse, which I'm still scared it's gonna get worse.

Cozy: 10:06

Yeah. So I think one thing about this is not only is it a a card that's pretty good, whatever, it's four outta a five stars, you know, somewhere in that reign. But it's also just a very fun card at that. But yeah, it's the precedent of. This happening within a limited time game mode and, and only having money to pay for it. Uh, but in my eyes too, it's also a, a communication error at, at the highest degree and just a bad taste in what has been a couple of wins. I think small wins for second tenure leading up to what this has been in general, but it tells a much bigger picture. And what I wanna do here I is just for everybody who doesn't know what's going on, is give second dinners response back, and then we can pick up from there. So they've done two responses. The first one was, I think someone did like one of those talk to the dev threads, which I, I, I think is cool actually. I've always liked these, uh, in the discord, you know, for immediate, uh, reaction as they cover up reaches his face quickly. They essentially this user asked, uh, greetings team. I know the launch of five Vol should be celebrated as a fun new mode. They played handful of games, but much like the rest of the community, I'm baffled at the decision to price Kid Omega at more than a hundred dollars if you were to buy the card outright. Griffin in the response here, which again, Griffin is the community manager of Snap. So, uh, you know, the guy, he's a vessel, uh, uh, of a lot and I, I think I want that to be said real quick. I guess before I read this, is that this is coming down to a couple people. It's not the whole team. Uh, you know, you gotta remember this when you're looking at corporate suits, you know, there's not, it's not the whole team conspiring together. Griffin responded. Our ongoing goal with limited time game mode, uh, shop rewards is to give players more control and flexibility over how they spend their earned currencies. Most rewards in the limited time game mode shop will be fully earn able using currencies alone. However, some top tier items may require additional gameplay and other modes to earn through gold to make up the difference. For example, kid Omega from high voltage over driver's price of the shop at the same cost as a standard series five card. Players who want to acquire it can use their earned volts to reduce the cost by buying it directly and supplementing with gold. Our alternatively players can use gold to purchase bonus missions. And, and it, and it goes on that they're gonna give some bonus volts to everybody. Now, if that wasn't bad enough, this one is what truly baffled me. So we had that as the immediate response, and I think people were, were kind of shocked.'cause some people, myself included, thought it was an, I thought it was an error. I thought it was like, oh no, they just, they just put in an extra zero or like, or whatever it might be. So let's talk about that immediate response and then we'll get into what was the tragic response that took'em a week to put up.

Regis: 12:43

Yeah, well there were like two versions of that too, right? Like, he like changed something. I can't even remember the details now. This has been such a crazy, hectic week with so many millions of messages I've received. But I, there was like a version where he said it was at the same cost and then, then he said it like at a premium cost or something. I feel like you actually maybe have the original version there. Yeah, I think I did. I got from, I'm not sure.

Cozy: 13:02

Yeah, I got it From the Discord or from a um, a, a tweet. A tweet. So it wasn't from the discourse. So I had the original. Yeah, yeah. Oh,

Regis: 13:08

I think it's been updated'cause he was wrong. It's not priced at the same, it's actually priced at a premium and he just like went in and, and like edited that to update the, to, to reflect to reality, I guess. Which I think that made a lot of people angry.'cause it was like, well, which is it? You know, like the messaging doesn't really match reality unless you fix it. All of these messages always to me just feel like, so corporate and like so pr which, you know, whatever. That's fine. I guess we use that in video games. But I have to say like. The second dinner is not a giant corporation. It's always felt like they had this opportunity to be a smaller team, be more community focused, be more honest and like straightforward and stuff. But the culture of the company and like the structure of the company, it's like they immediately tried to become this really corporate entity. They actually sound and in many ways, I think operate even more corporate than like Blizzard these days. Which blizzard, you know, Activision Blizzard's been this giant behemoth forever, now owned by Microsoft and stuff. And it almost feels like Blizzard has a little bit more like fine touch and like human way of speaking than second dinner, which I, I always get so frustrated by that. It's like, how did this happen? Why are you guys already so corporate? It never made sense to me. So every time I see those messages, that's just how I feel. It's like, can't we just be real for a second? Like, just talk to us. Don't, don't write these super prepared messages all the time.

Alex: 14:27

You go into Cha PT, you type, you are a game developer and everyone's pissed.

Cozy: 14:32

Well, no, dude, but that's enter your

Alex: 14:33

query from, there's

Cozy: 14:34

funny you say that. Okay. First of all, I always think of Ankin or everyone says, you become this sore thing you, you swore to destroy or whatever he says to to Ankin. And that's what it feels like. Second dinner. It's like they became this company, they broke away to make this company and then it's become more corporate. I first of all just wanna say you're a teacher, Alex. I, I would hate being a teacher at this day and age because like the amount of little Timmy that come in with their homework, that's chat gtd is is crazy. But there's systems in place to see if things have been written by ai or at least there's, there's starting to get this happening. So we just, and I, we've talked a plethora this week about all this, which is what led to, to some of this right here and the response to all this. So let me lead this up to it guys. It was typically when you have an outrage, in fact in Snap we've had other blimps and outrageous, they typically respond, I would say 24 to 48 hours. Like they're typically pretty. Pretty fast. And I would say almost always the response is good. Like it's been a decent response. A decent response, whether it's like what is gonna be done because of it or just owning up sometimes to, to some of it. And, sorry, I said a lot of the time, I think some of the time, this time though, it took, I believe it came out yesterday, right? Friday came out two days ago. Uh, so it took, we were filming this on Sunday, so it took'em nearly five days to get this response out with all the chaos. So they went five full days, which doesn't seem like a long time. That's an eternity of backlash just happening all over the internet, which they know is happening. So they had that time to sit down. They're together. They're trying to make this decision as, and this is where it just baffles my mind. They sit down in a room at a table and I, I've sat at that table a a couple of times in their offices and they're trying to decide what do we do with this situation? And I think everybody thought. Everybody thought it was gonna be a better answer than what we got. And essentially what we got, ladies and gentlemen, was the following. This was a response, which you could see down at the bottom there. Very met with great emojis of just agrees the trash can is my personal favorite. The 3,219. I would actually reckon say this is probably the most reactive posts that they've had in quite some time. The LI mean, it gets funnier the more you look at the, the diversification rat actually, it's kind of a fun little game of Pictionary if you continue to, to look at it more and more. But a the Marvel Snap scene, they said we want to thank, you know what Alex, I'm gonna let you read this one. Go ahead. You, you can read this one bottom than top. I'll let you get this one. I'm not doing another one.

Alex: 17:00

I was looking at the frowny face with 988 and trying to hold back my laughter. That was a good one too. I want to thank everyone for providing your honest feedback about high voltage overdrive and its rewards. Specifically Kid Omega. The intent behind Kid Omega's pricing was to offer players a significant discount off of the price of a Series five card using volts. I'm for the record. I'm laughing at the statement, not at the emojis. Yeah. We set a precedent in previous limited time game modes, and we didn't clearly set new expectations, which caused confusion. Moving forward, we'll set better expectations for event rewards, including when cards like Kid Omega will be added to the series pack pool, which will be next month. Our aim is for all limited time game mode cards, rewards to hit the respective pools around 30 days after its debut. We'll continue to iterate when it comes down to limited time game modes play, and how we will structure their rewards. Our goal for all player sorry. Our goal for all these modes is to have something that players want to earn regardless of their level of spend. Some events will be more focused on free to play rewards, while others may include other rewards that provide more purchase value. For the remainder of this edition of High Voltage Overdrive, we'll be sending a one-time delivery of 2,500 volts to players inboxes. Due to some impactful bugs dampening the volts in XB acquisition. It was also pointed out that it is cheaper to directly supplement volts for gold as opposed to the more expensive mission refresh that was unintended, and we'll look to fixing that in the future. To lead off improving our communications around events ahead of time, we'll be sharing details about next week's sanctum, uh, showdown very soon. Your feedback is not only helpful, but key to the future of Marvel Snap. This conversation isn't one and done. It evolves just like the game and your feedback helps shape it. We're committed to keeping this conversation open. It will never be perfect for everyone, but our goal is fairness and transparency.

Cozy: 18:55

Before we even give our response on this, I just want to quote something that is hilarious on this. I put, uh, this into some, Hey, is this AI talk? Because if you read that, it comes across as extreme AI written not by any human hand, and essentially this was what, this is what was said here. For, essentially, yes, they, they're saying that in some degree that this was either heavily edited or completely written by ai or corporate communication tools over polished languages. Phrases like our goal is fairness and transparency, or it evolves just like the game are. Hallmark phrases of brand safe pr languages that lack natural human voice or personal tone softened accountability. Rather than saying, we messed up, it dances around the responsibility. We didn't clearly set new expectations. And we'll look at fixing that. Uh, are polite deflections often found in most AI generated or legal reviewed statements. And then formulaic structure. The response follows a classic format, acknowledge feedback, justify, did promise improvements, offer compensation, and tease the future. This structure is almost exclusively used by AI communications and what AI models train for pr. So that sums that up pretty well.

Regis: 20:04

They literally said, our only regret is not warning you how shitty it was gonna be. That's it. They just said, Hey, next time we'll tell you ahead of time. It's gonna suck. That's it. I just can't believe it. Oh my God. Also, I don't think that I, I think they had the statement ready before Friday. They just like, it's a very common PR tactic to release shitty news at the end of the cycle of the week on Friday afternoon so that people go into the weekend and like don't see it, or don't forget it or whatever. They're out having fun instead of reading the news. So they probably just wanted to bury this statement'cause they knew it was gonna be poorly received. So they probably had this already on Tuesday.'cause all I gotta do is plug it in a chat GPT. Right. I just hate it so much, dude. I like, I've always, I've, every time they just, they screw something up. And, you know, we, we know that it's, it's this song and dance every time. And then they walk it back a little bit and there's been this expectations like, okay, we screwed it up, we pushed you guys too far. And they kind of meet us halfway, or not really halfway, but you know, they, they, at least they give in a little this time they said, Nope, we're done giving in. We're not meeting you guys halfway. We're screw you. This is how it's gonna be now. Deal with it. And I, I was like,'cause I never actually really got that mad when Kid Omega came out. Like, I was very frustrated. It was insane. But I thought we do the thing where they walk it back and they didn't. So now I'm just like, what? This is what made me like give up and get so frustrated on, on uh, on Friday when I saw this. And I've, like, I put tweets, you know, discord messages, whatever. It just, like for the first time they just said, screw you guys. And that really, uh, that like broke me a little bit. Maybe like really frustrated and really sad, honestly. Like, okay, this, we're in the end game now. Like, you know, it's time to just

Cozy: 21:42

suck it up. I love that you highlight that. Uh, re just said it's usually at the end of the week, or it's at like 2:00 AM It's one or the other. They decided to go with the Friday route and it's just ridiculous. It's crazy that there only remark here was, was just that they did not market it to us on purpose, by the way.'cause this was asked for by creators, can we get access to the rewards? Can we see this? They gave a preview typically at our little, whatever you wanna call that little creator section. Uh, and so this was deliberately miscommunicated.

Alex: 22:11

There's a couple things I wanna say here that I think are really important. First of all I want you guys listening to know that Regis specifically went out of his way in our creator Discord to try to correct this course. Was very open with feedback that was written directly from the heart. And I hope that second dinner took that to heart because I certainly read it and was thinking to myself this man speaks for all of us. And, uh, I just want you guys to know that behind the scenes, a lot of work with myself and Regis and Cozy goes in, not some, some negotiations are not always best done publicly. And so, you know, there's a lot of effort that goes be behind the scenes to try to speak in the community's best interest. The key thing I wanna take away from the statement that they provided on the Friday was that, um. It was a double down on destroying community sediment, like absolutely just destroying what the community felt about this game, and that was heartbreaking. I'd hate to say it. Second dinner, the problem is not a communications problem. You are creating unforced errors over and over and over again. That could be easily mitigated by sitting down to gather and saying What's best for our players and what's best for our community, and what's best for the health of our game, not what's best for our pocketbook. It almost reminds me when I was a kid, it was this like little like Atari game where you had a lemonade stand and it was a really hot day. You can sell lemonade for$20, but you, you would only sell a couple because there's only so many dumb, there's people's dumb enough to buy lemonade for$20, but you'd sell way more lemonade if you just priced it reasonably at a still legitimate profit. And so I don't wanna just, I don't wanna simplify things, but I feel like second dinner, we shouldn't be approaching your consumer base as well. How can we squeeze every single possible penny here? I think that the player engagement and the player, uh, like sediment is super important and for the longevity of the game. And for having a long tail of success in revenue and stuff. But honestly, this was never a communications issue. It would be disingenuous to pretend that it is a communications issue. What this was it's agreed problem where essentially you created a limited time game mode that should been something for community engagement, and you strictly try to monetize the hell out of it. How you just allowed people to enjoy the game mode, reengage with Marvel Snap in particular with this new era where we're supposed to be getting more cards, new cards, a lasting better economy, and all those things you promised us. Instead of getting all that, what we've got is this hamster wheel of like 12 cards being released and then impossible to purchase or impossible to earn, sorry, cards and limited time game modes, which should have been a celebration of the community. And instead, this is where you are. So I don't think it's, it's about expectations and setting new expectations for ridiculously overpriced garbage ask game modes in the future. It's about looking at what your community wants, looking at what is best for Marvel Snap going forward. And it's, it's not this.

Cozy: 24:55

Y on all of that. And plus it's garbage communication. So like, just the extra sprinkle on top. Like I think it's communication too, because it's like all of that. A hundred percent. I think here's the problem too. I come from mobile games before now. Snap, right? And uh, and funny enough, the game that I covered before Snap got shut down, all right? And you don't want to hap you want to, you wanna know what happened before it got shut down. They completely put a choke hold and they did the complete sucking fallacy effect on the remaining players that spent money on their games. A k, a and mobile terms. Wales Regis is familiar with the term as well. Alex, I'm sure you know Wales of the game, right? They. Rely on them to spend a lot of the money. Uh, you've got what I like to call, kind of greedy dolphins. It's in that middle ground and you got the free to play rate. So then there's that middle class that's gonna be some of the money and they can get, they can get a couple of those to kind of go up to that well status a little bit, and then it completely ostracizes and just eliminates the free to play experience completely. Which the problem right now with Snap is Snap is a super fun game and the core gameplay is great casually especially, but the casual player base is just screwed when it comes to stuff like this. And that's, that, that is such a, uh, and this is just the beginning. That's the problem. Not even the beginning, I guess it, there's things that have led up to this, but the fact that they're in their own words, actually effing, they, this is just the beginning. Th they're gonna just let us know now more in advance. And this is for a topic in just a second, not this moment, but we have a season pass data mind at the moment that ha that, that you gotta pay for more expensive season pass to get another card. For the season coming, I think in July. So it, it's a slippery slope that I've seen before, that I've been a part of before. And guess what? It stretches the game out and then the game is done. That I've seen this over and over. I'm not saying Snap is done anytime soon because they've got a larger pool of players to to unfortunately do this to. But it's, it's, I've seen the song and dance.

Regis: 26:49

Yeah. You know, I, I seen like, uh, YouTube comments, Twitter, wherever so many people saying like, don't you want them to make money? Don't you want them to stay in business? It's a business. They're allowed to make money. And like, yes, of course. Literally no one on Earth wants them to stay in business more than we do because it's also our careers at stake, right? Like, well, Cozy, your rivals guy, now you got, you got a nice little buffer. But Alex and I, at the very least are all in on Snap, right? Like we, we desperately want the game to survive. But what we're saying is we feel like we have the foresight to understand that when you squeeze the player base so hard, particularly for the present, it while disregarding the future, you're just milking everybody so hard, pushing them. So far, what happens is you just, you just kill the game from the bottom up. Like you just keep eroding the player base who can't handle all this pressure from a monetization, from an engagement standpoint, asking people to spend 10 freaking hours a day playing the game, people just start to erode away and the game shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. And the whales need the free to plea, free to play players to feed into the system. Whales wanna have advantages, they wanna have stuff to show off they're big shiny cosmetics and stuff. If the player base goes, the whales go. So what we're saying is like, yes, of course we want them to make money. It's okay to charge money for cards. We want the game to be profitable. But when you do it this way, you're just going to rapidly increase the rate at which the game dies. Like it may not be a year or two years, right? But this could have been a 10, 15 year lifespan on a game. At least. Like we've seen Hearthstone succeed already for 10 years and is still in a really solid state. I thought Marvel Snap had that kind of longevity. If they treated the game well, if they treated the player base well, I'm thinking now like, are we gonna make it two or three years from here? Like how quickly does the player base dry up when they're pressured this much? So it's not a question of like, we want everything for free, or we're like trying to take advantage of Marvel Snap. We just want them to do it in a reasonable way that feels healthy for the longevity of the game and the player base, which this to me does not feel, I think it's just too much squeeze, frankly.

Alex: 28:56

I absolutely agree a hundred percent. And it goes right back to the idea that like, this was their first major move, self-published. Like that's crazy. In the back of my head, I always wondered if like, new verse was like the suit in the room that was like, no, nah, nah, you're pricing it at this. Like, I pictured in my head, like you said it perfect where you just before, like, you know, there mar like, uh, second dinner is not a large corporate entity. It's a small like, it should have like a mom pop shop feel to it. And you almost wanted to root for them as like the underdog in what was, you know, you have a publisher in a, in a developer relationship and then the publisher's gone and the most, the worst possible case of monetization in its history is then released. Like literally the worst they've ever done is released. And it's so heartbreaking because for me it feels like, and the, what I got from feedback from the community was. It's kinda like a you fool me once. Shame on you. You fool me twice. Shame on me situation. A lot of people key back because of Snap packs. A lot of people came back because they saw the Snap packs. They saw that second dinner was now self-publishing and they had hope because they love Marvel Snap. It's, the game is incredible. It's everything else around it that is a complete shit show. The game is incredible and yet. Now you're like, okay. People are like, you know what, you got me again man. Like we thought things were changing. We thought that you guys have smartened up. We thought the Snap Pass was gonna change any everything. Instead, we have like 12 cards released this month. I have no hope of catching up. Even if I buy the season pass and buy a bundle or two, like I'm still gonna fall like Hopely behind. I have no hope of getting Kid Omega without spending$150. I can't even play it until I block out every single day and earn the card. I'm just done and I'm moving on to something else.'cause second inter, there's a ton of competition out there. There's a ton of competition and there's other games to play. And if you're not gonna like, be willing to try to like support your player base in a positive manner, they're gonna find another place to be supported.

Cozy: 30:50

The problem too for me is that we've been unable to update this game. We just, the other day I asked Alex, I said, if I stop playing after, three months of snap's release. Right? And I said, yo, man, dude, I love that game when it came out. What has come to the game since I left? Like what have they, what's some bangers they drop, right? Like we just answer that question of relevant content.

Regis: 31:10

Dude, there's, there's like nothing. I mean there the limited time game modes are kind of something, but they're limited number one. So you can't just like come back and enjoy them, whatever necessarily. And, and they're not really that significant. I guess we kind of got conquest, but I never really cared about that. It it but you look at the Chinese client, by the way. I dunno if people know there's a Chinese client that's run separately. I think Dexter talked about this a little bit recently. It, it's gotten so much stuff in like no time. It's been like six months. It has like 10 extra things that our client still doesn't have. It's, I, I like, I hate to say things like this, but I honestly don't know what they're doing. I don't mean, I don't mean like from a logical standpoint. I mean like literally I don't understand what like, day to day what's happening. I don't know what's being like worked on. I don't, I, it's just, it blows my mind. I'm so sorry. I'm mad. I'm getting angry. That's why. No,

Cozy: 31:56

this is why I bring this up though. Okay. Because here's, this is my frustration. I'll tell you what they're doing. It's constantly fixing this, the BS that's self-created. Because if you look back to it, right, like I don't even know how far you wanna go back. We're not gonna go to like Nexus events'cause that was quickly handled back in like beta days, right? But if you go to like, even like when Za Boo and all that happened, like they had like kind of the mess of how to get new cars there, right? So they spend so much resources creating spotlight caches, right? A ton of time. And redirection went to making sure Monet sedation, whatever. Making sure getting your collection felt good. That took a lot of resources. They've even omitted to that on calls and on talks. Took a lot of resources to get that in. Boom, they make it, guess what? Absolute travesty doesn't work out. They go back, they get the token thing fixed a little bit because they realize that it was, a little bit too much penny pinching. Then it, by the way, you name the thing and it's gonna come with. Money and problems behind it. Oh, albums come out. Oh, awesome. Cool. Like a great way to showcase all your variants. You can get most of it money based. Right. Okay. Well that was a feature that took a lot of time up and that would've been cool to put in. Anything else? Oh, well, hey, Mastery's coming guy, and I skipped like four, but Mastery coming guys. Awesome. Hey, how cool would it be to have Deadpool and you get you know, whatever amount of power on a Deadpool and that's gonna be your card mastery. This is what was teased to us. Oh my God, that's so cool. How fun is that? What a great way to have just a good gameplay loop and to play a core gameplay that's top tier. But then you have like these little mini goals and that's what keeps games really healthy. Oh, just, just kidding. It's canceled. Wait just kidding. It's gonna come back and be fully about money. It's mind effing boggling and during all that mess. Okay, so this is gonna be a double comment, but doing all that miss. The guy behind all the variants in the art director of the game. Johnny, one of my favorite people that worked at the company, got let go about six months ago. I, I believe it was, or even longer. It could have been a year at this point. I forgot. I can look. Uh, great guy Gone, new first team, Johnny and, uh, or not Johnny Richard.

Alex: 34:01

Richard and Cory.

Cozy: 34:02

Richard and Corey, awesome guys. They were actually great. Yeah, they were on the, uh, marketing team. I worked with them plenty through, uh, conquers and doing commercials and whatever. With them gone, they don't work there anymore too. Ben and Nikki, uh, great people. I, I think every experience I've had with bro has been awesome. Nick is one of my favorite people in the world. I think they're working on another game. I don't know. I have no idea who works over there at the moment, but that's, that's where all their time is going. Dude, right now is just continually just trying to get the system to spend money on the game better and better for them, essentially.

Regis: 34:38

By the way, I, I don't know any of these people. No, I know you don't. I know you don't. I know one, well, sort of two people at second dinner. I know the community manager and only through limited interactions. We've maybe spoken never in person or on voice. We've chatted on Discord maybe four times over the last two years or whatever. I dunno how long he's been there. But I know the previous community manager, we've talked once on a chat, never spoken to Ben Broad in my life, despite being fairly prominent creator in both his games. I, I don't know anybody. I, uh, I've just been completely uninvolved with second enter the entire time. I which, okay. I'm jealous. I wanna, I'm jealous. I

Cozy: 35:18

wanna this in. I wanna raise this in'cause I do want to talk about this.'cause there's a lot I have to say actually, about your involvement with the game and the lack there of it. First dialing it just to the, the time and the effort though on what it seems like has been on mastery and albums and Oh, sure. And lack of content. That's what I want. Let's go there. But I, I want to go back to that, so we'll get back to that in moment.

Regis: 35:37

We'll circle back, we'll circle back. I mean, I, I'm not really, we'll talk about itm not really complaining. I just, it's, uh, it's always surprised me anyway. Yes. Uh, yeah. Well, here's what I say, right? Like, I don't mind them investing in things that, that monetize the game. Like, you know, if they need that or whatever, that makes sense to me. But you would hope that investing in things that, that the players or, or are organically engaged with things players want to do, should have those knock on effects that make those players invest financially in the game. If you made mastery really fun and engaging from a play standpoint, you're increasing engagement, you're increasing loyalty. You're making people feel more connected to the game that should just naturally have passback effects that makes you more money. That's what we see in other games. They make things that players like. And what to do second dinner, like tries to skip that part of it and just extract the money upfront before building that new layer of engagement. It's like they've missed a step there. So they never make anything that players really like or wanna do. And in fact, I think a lot of people are frustrated with what mastery did. Like made it harder to get certain splits and stuff. God knows. I don't know anything about splits. I've never, I don't use variants at all, but I just hate that they never put like the experience first and trust that they've made something good. They always put the monetization above it. It's okay to be monetized, but you just have to sync that together and like earn players' engagement naturally instead of trying to always force it. That's what I hate.

Alex: 37:05

I love what you said there, Regis, and something. Uh, I'm gonna let the teacher in me come out a little bit. Something I always tell my high school students is that I. As human beings, we always, we're naturally trusting people. We, we begin with a element of trust with anybody we engage with. And in the case of second dinner, of course you have that trust. The challenge with trust is that once it's eroded or destroyed, it's literally the most impossible thing to ever build back in, in life. Whether it's, you know, relationships or whether it's anything that you do when trust is impacted or destroyed, it is near impossible to build once again. And if you do build it, it takes a whole lot of time, a whole lot of time. And so when you think about this new era of Snap and the people coming back for the Snap packs and everything, trust is most certainly impacted there. And um, I think you're right, Regis. I think that, uh, it's one of those things where. They, they should have prioritized the player experience. They should have been prioritizing how people engage with their game. And that would've likely provided that long tail of earning potential instead of trying to just ring as many sense out of everyone's pockets as possible. And it really did make the game worse though. It made the experience of playing Snap worse because they haven't actually provided us with anything that we can legitimately engage with for fun without like, it's somehow being ru ruined monetarily, like limited time game modes were supposed to be an exciting new injection into the Marvel Snap game, where like it would kind of break up that monotony and instead it's an avenue for like ruthless and savage monetization. And I think that's really frustrating.

Cozy: 38:42

Well, especially because in mobile games like this too people are just, aren't even aware of how much they spend. It's actually crazy. I, I think like if I didn't do like my taxes on this,'cause I, I literally do it for write offs, right? When you start to look at the figures that get spent, it's crazy and it adds up. Very fast. In fact, you know, I think the quick, quickest way for you to not spin on the game is just go back and look what you've spent on it so far, and you're like, oh my God. Like I didn't realize that this one variant now this whatever. It adds up. I think too, one of the things that just puzzled me and I'll never, I I want under understand this ever, is it's the core philosophy, a bit of what they're about now. They've changed it a little bit.'cause we have this, uh, I don't even know the name of it. Uh, the, what's this, uh, tournament thing they've been doing?

Regis: 39:26

Golden Gauntlet.

Cozy: 39:27

That one. Okay. So this was actually a practice of what the company didn't do this at all. So conquerors event was the first thing they ever tried to do, but we weren't allowed to say the word tournament. And they were very, and this was, from what I understood, was not a. New verse thing. It was a second did thing. They didn't want tournament to be used on cast. Wasn't allowed to say that. I don't even know if that's NDA. I don't really care. That'd be a weird NDA to have. That'd be a way to go down. Right? Like lose all my go to court, go in court'cause of that. Uh, but they, so there was like, they did not want there to be this, uh, competitive environment. They didn't want there to be any of that. And conquer kind of found like a way around that. Uh, and then they, they didn't want to pick up and do any more of those. But then before that too they've also showed now outside of the, the new game mode that they released like three months into it. Like it was very quickly that they're, they don't want to do new game modes. Like that was the thing they don't, they did not want to be a part of. They want to do these limited time game modes. They've had blogs on that. That's kind of the, that's kind of the core that they believe in moving forward is these limited time game modes. So at its core, the philosophy around it is just so weird to me because like. Look at Magic, the gathering, let's say an amazing game. Standard's awesome. You know what? Just, you know what blew up to the Moon was commander and that was a new way to play the game. That's what blew up, right? You can have an incredible core gameplay, but you always have to add and innovate new ways to play that. And they just have refused to do so. It just feels like they always are putting up limits on what this game could be and that they want to keep it for casual. But again, a lot of the supporting around it is not for a casual player.

Regis: 41:07

Yeah. It almost feels like they don't trust their ability to like make something that's good and lasting, or at least that and monetizable, like if you know it, it's almost like it demands more investment from developer hours upfront and they're scared to commit to those sort of things because if it, they can't monetize it effectively, it'll just be seen as a big loss. Which, I mean, that sucks. You gotta have faith in yourself sometimes, right? You gotta take big swings if you want to get big hits. Um, so. Yeah, it, it makes the game feel kind of lifeless. You know, like the only like new exciting thing we get are cards and frankly, a lot of cards aren't really that exciting either. I always talk about like, and, and you hinted to this as well, like other card games have big expansion launches, right? Where they drop 130 cards, they have all these new keywords and themes and these crazy things and people notice those like, oh my God, I gotta come back to play all of this shiny new stuff all at once. It's this exciting moment to reengage players and Snap doesn't have anything like that. There's just no, like, you know, one cool new card comes out, like, Dormammu is coming out this week. It looks pretty cool and big and fancy that normally might have pulled some players back, but now they're gonna be coming back into an absolute shit storm of Marvel Snap and be like, why is everybody so angry? It's like the worst timing, but it's, uh. It does just make the game feel really flat and level. There aren't a lot of like peaks and valleys and moments to get attached to, which is frustrating as a creator as well.'cause for us it's like we have to kind of maintain the hype for them and like get people excited about the game. And that's not very easy to do, frankly. It's actually really challenging to do in, in most cases.

Alex: 42:40

Yeah, there's a couple of challenges related to that as well. When you have like sets spring release and you have rotations and stuff like, like, uh, like that, like with the hers loan's, a good example is you have standard, you have wild and et cetera. It also creates like these launching points where you can kind of reengage with a game. With Marvel Snap, the way the collection system works, if you, if you take six months off, you're just, you're dead man. Like you're not coming back. Are you kidding me? Like for what? You'd have to spend an absolute fortune just for Kid Omega, you need 200 bucks. And then you, all of a sudden, you're so far behind, you'll never be able to like catch up. And I, like, I am not saying that rotation is the answer, but if I wanna play Hearthstone, I come in on a new set launch, I buy packs for that set. And at least I know that like I don't have to worry about like years and years and years of back catalog. I just won't play wild. I'll play standard or whatever, right? And so we don't have that here. And so I think the idea of coming back and reengaging with Snap is a super daunting thing. And so for a lot of people. Once you're out, you're, you're gone. And I think that like, that's a major challenge that they need to rectify and stuff like this doesn't help.

Cozy: 43:43

Well, and it's funny'cause it, it continued to that, that got stretched more and more.'cause I used to defend it. This was two years ago. I'd be like, you can play Patriot, come back, play Patriot Deck, you can be fine. Right. And then I saw something on Twitter, I think it was what was I, uh, speci. I love this guy, but he used to play the game. He doesn't anymore. He had no thing. But he came back, he tried to play after being off for a year or two and he tried to come back and just truly see like how it was as a new, and it was so evident from that, how bad it is to try to come back and have any type of really even chance, especially if you're trying to get up in the higher echelons. But, and so that, that alone I is so tough because, I mean, this is early on too. More so now, but the amount of people like three months in, let's say into Snap, maybe four months in, they're like, man, this game looks so fun. Like. How do I get all the cars? And there's just been this back and forth with like full collection, not full collection. They had a bin bro ad that I think they deleted finally, like four months ago. But it was out there for two years of like, you can't come in here and buy it, you know? Uh, it's a different game. And then, then they release different stuff and now you can buy tokens, right? So it's like that, that has always just been this weird, it's just, it's never had a core identity of, of like how they want the casual player to engage with it. And just seems like a lack of a, I dunno, a gameplay. I don't know, man. It's, it's been rough there.

Regis: 44:59

Yeah. I feel like we, I, I feel like we bear the burden of a lot of this as creators, weirdly, like, you know, like we are this like giant marketing arm for second dinner. Not literally, you know, we're not tied to them, but, you know, we end up doing, they, it's like almost they rely on creators and stuff in many ways to power so much of the hype and excitement and messaging like patch notes, right? Like we're this basically free, uh, marketing arm of second dinner, which sucks. I hate that. I hate that responsibility, but

Cozy: 45:27

yeah. Uh, this is something I wanna point it to with the new era of Snap. That, that, this is why I'm so puzzled by all this too. Okay? So if you've ever worked for a giant corporate entity, right? Like they I think we can all agree Snap did way better than I think they were even anticipating at launch. Like the game truly blew up, right? So they had a very small team game, blew up to huge proportions. One game of the, the mobile game of the year, right? And just popped off to the highest degree. Millions of players weren't ready for it. Oh my goodness. Did what? Whatever. You can talk about that. But let's talk about the money sense behind it. So then you have you have new verse now looking at all that money made, and typically how this works is you've got the suits at the top and you got all the people here. And this is what I always assume. Second didn was, was they were here responding to here, and these people, they just make money and that's what they care about, right? And they're asking, I. Wait, we made money. They did. I, I did this in the hotel world. I couldn't tell you how many times this would happen. We'd get this like giant event or something that would happen, and the next year, these owners who don't look at anything other than how much money is coming in, they'd say, why aren't we getting as much money as we got last year? And so then they have to raise stakes. They have to raise prices, they have to raise different things. And that's kind of what we've seen here with Snap. What's mind boggling is they don't have this person anymore. There's no one outside of second dinner itself. As a company looking at year over year reports and all the business behind Snap to where it's like, at this point it's just completely self, it's just self ran and it's their decision making at this point. And that's why this thing is so earth shattering crazy to me.

Regis: 47:04

Yeah. On the business structure side of this, like I, I put out, I don't know when this airs, but I, I think I'll have a video live. I, I did a whole rant video on my channel talking about some of the business side of it, a little bit like, um. I, I, most people, I don't even think know this, you guys might not even know this a about a year ago, I think it was January 20, 24, second dinner, got a hundred million dollars investment from Griffin Gaming Partners, which is a venture capital firm who invests in gaming companies. And I really thought at that time, like, oh, this is great. Like venture capital typically, as opposed to like private equity focuses on growth initiatives. They want to, they want to grow a company, so they're, they're more worried about like user acquisition, gaining players, engaging players. They care more about metrics than usually revenue right away. They're not really trying to capitalize on revenue right now. They're hoping to build something enormous and then maybe have like an exit, like an IPO and gain revenue way down the road once they've built this like behemoth awesome all star company. So I thought, I always thought like, oh, that's great news. Like venture Capital's gonna give them some time. They're not gonna have to like squeeze people so hard. They're gonna have to focus so much on revenue. They got this a hundred million dollars runway. Yeah, and I thought, you know, it's, it's not gonna be such a high pressure scenario, but that's not what we've seen. And I was like trying to rack my brain like, why is this, why does it feel like Marvel Snap is not being given this longer leash to grow and thrive? And I realized it might actually be because of its connection to the Marvel ip. So Marvel Snap licenses, the Marvel, you know, names, characters, everything from Marvel, they likely have to pay an enormous licensing fee for that. It's not like it's a free relationship. About

Cozy: 48:33

50% was Disney. 50% of the app store is what was Disney back when I knew a game. Another game.

Regis: 48:39

Yeah. There you go. Okay. Yeah. So pay this usual licensing fee or whatever, but what that looks like to venture capital is like venture capital wants. To have this like giant scaling opportunity from a revenue standpoint they tend to care a lot about ip, intellectual property. They don't own the Marvel ip, so they might be looking at Marvel Snap as like this good way to get the game off the ground or the company off the ground and like get some recognition, get some like proof of concept like, Hey, we know they can make good games, but we're investing in their next project where probably they're going to own the ip. A good example I was thinking about is like Angry Birds. You guys remember Angry Birds probably from back in the day, right? Like Angry Birds was a mobile game that was really popular, but then it became toys and movies and lunchboxes and you know, all these licensed things they can sell later, right? They make way more money on the backend from all these things. Later, I'm thinking probably their ual, venture capital backers are thinking, Hey, like Marvel Snap's never gonna make us that much money. Let's just make sure it's sustainable and solvent, which means we do need to turn the screws a little bit on revenue. Like we need to squeeze a little bit just to make sure this thing can run successfully. And it's not a black mark on our name or our company. Like maybe we'll just keep it going, not really maintenance mode, but just like, Minoru support and not really invest a ton in it while we actually invest our resources and our brain trust and our, our talent capital. So the bin broads of the world, they're gonna go work on something new or we can actually cash in and make a ton of money. So this venture capital thing, like might have actually backfired and of, you know, of course this is all speculation, like we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes, but like, I was trying to break it down. I think maybe that's what's happening is they just don't really see a future in Marvel Snap because of its tie to the Marvel license. So we, I I, I almost feel like we might just be stuck where it's like, maybe they never really turned this around or reinvest in the game, which I hate to think like, that makes me so sad and frustrated.'cause it feels like it was a real golden goose for them. But like, they shot their golden goose in many ways. Took it out, buying the shed and shot it. But that's the only thing I can think of from a business standpoint. I, you know, I'm just a casual follower of these things, not an expert. But

Cozy: 50:38

yeah. Two things I can just speak on real quick, Alex to that is first of all, just even getting the game back to where it's like healthy and all that is just the, that's the almost, that's by far the easiest part, the user reacquisition and the marketing spin is true. Like they would have to spend a lot of money in marketing and it's definitely not going to the creators. So they would have to do it in. Uh, the ads they have are great. So that's a whole, that's a whole other issue. People always talk about, like Snapchat, like Alex, the Snap packs brought people back, like maybe the streams, I'm telling you. But, uh, as a huge, it wasn't as big. Right? As, as people realize, like, because getting people to reinstall a game, reabsorb it, get dived in, that's a mess to do. That's very hard to do. That's why it's so easy to bring on, keep a new cu uh, a retaining customer than bringing on a new one. That's always just been the bare basics of it. But to what you just said, where you just almost no doubt, because even actually it was in some interview when Snap came out, I think it was like an IG interview, Ben said that he at first made Snap where it wasn't gonna be with Marvel, but then he realized playing, this is so crazy, this is coming back full circle. But playing cards like taser face and, you know, laser hands and, and Flyboy is not fun. It just wasn't as fun. It wasn't as cool. And so that's why they decided to go with the Marvel ip because immediately you have that. Huge connection and honestly endless with Marvel potential ideas of creativity and you get access to everything that Marvel is. That's why Disney asked for 50 damn percent of it because it's so much back power to have Marvel and that's why you see so many damn Marvel games. People really tried to or at least there, it definitely did. Like 2010 there was like everything, it puzzles, bubbles, whatever. Everything was a, was a a, a damn, uh, Marvel game. But that's the main backing behind it. And so it's funny that you said that because whenever Smart Decks came out, which was a while ago at this point, I mean, that was like a year and a half ago. That was when I was told that was when positions were being posted for new stuff, for a new game that was launching. And that was when I saw kind of who I was very, close to getting to talk with Nikki all the time and, and, and, and them over at second dinner went to go work on that game. And Ben, I would assume as well, it's been now a year and a half. Games take a long time to make, so it could be another year and a half or whatever, but I, I think you could be onto something with, uh, the tin foil not even tin foil. I think it's a, it's a, at least it's a very sturdy tin foil. Huh. Lemme put it that way. Alex,

Alex: 53:04

I, I am hoping that they're working on, uh, on something, and I wanna just kind of reiterate what Regis was saying, that like, I think that Marvel Snap is, at its core, an incredible game, and it would be heartbreaking to think that they've pulled, uh, you know, resources off of the game where they could be creating something that could do what Hearthstone's done for over a decade or whatever, right? Uh, this is a game that could've been an absolute like. Just a perpetual player in the card gaming space. It has the gameplay, it plays the best more than anything else. It's, it's truly revolutionary in that, in that standpoint. And the thing that always got me excited about Marvel Snap is it always felt like it learned the lessons from games that came before to the point where like playing some other games, like they feel slow. You don't have the same excitement playing specific cards. The art doesn't stand out the way Snap does. Like Snap really does a lot of stuff. Great. And I think that's another core thing here. And another, if second end is listening another core element or pillar of as to why there's so much frustration. You've got an incredible game. All you had to do was not screw up everything else. Like that's kind of the, the, the crux of it. Like you have a game that plays great, looks great, fantastic ip, it is universally regarded as one of the best car games to sit down and play. And you found every opportunity to just walk your consumer base away. I think that's really frustrating, especially as someone who's a creator, like all of us to watch people that like we care about and we interact with on a daily basis, say, like, get message to say, you know what? Like I'm done. I can't do anymore. That's heartbreaking. That's heartbreaking. That's, you know, years of relationships we've built with people that are, are now just disintegrating in front of our eyes because you wanna make a couple extra bucks on some stupid card and some limited time game mode that ultimately, like, who cares? You know what I mean? You had something great and I think it got, uh, I don't know, they just got lost along the way at some point.

Cozy: 54:57

So I want to, uh, transition to some creator talk, uh, about all this in a second. I wanna wrap up some of this purchasing talk again, guys. I think a lot of the thing is, it's not just about the kiddo mega carb being a hundred bucks. It's just the five day statement and then essentially saying that this is gonna happen again. This is gonna happen again. We're sorry we didn't tell you, uh, that, that, that's a big key. What were we gonna say? We just.

Regis: 55:17

Oh, well, it's just the, you know, this was the breaking, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. And, you know, Alex, you know, said, fool me once. Fool me twice that, that it's more like, fool me 27 times. Yeah. At this stage, right? Like, you know, this had happened two years ago. It would be annoying. We might not really be that frustrated by it, but it's just like, it compounding and pounding and pounding and it's like everybody's done. Yeah. Like it's just too much. This was, it pushed it, one, one pushed too far and that's why this one feels more significant to me at least, particularly.'cause like I said, they just didn't walk it back at all. They just said, screw it. This is how it is. That to me, ratcheted things up. That's why I'm like, amped up a little bit more about it. I know. I don't ever really seem mad. I'm just a happy go lucky, jolly guy. It's hard for me to get like, angry, but I'm like riled up more internally than ever before. So, anyway. Can I ask, I seen

Cozy: 56:02

the sentiment on, on social, uh, media a little bit. It's like, oh, well guess what? Next week, new car, new title. This card's busted. Everyone's gonna go back to where they were a week later. Like for you guys individually, it's a little different for me and I'll speak on it in a second, but like, what does this, what does this taste leave in your mouth as a creator for the game? And honestly, hey, director of market marketing, like, that's honestly our job. So what does that leave you?

Regis: 56:26

Yeah, I mean, for me, like this is my job, right? I'm still gonna make videos. I'm still going to, try to find the fun in the game because I think there's still a lot of players who are gonna be doing the same. And I think I'm trying my best to like represent them. So I, you know, I think I'll still have fun playing cards. I'm still going to make Marvel Snap videos. It's, you know, it is my job. It's, it's, uh, not all of my job. Like, I still have a really healthy Hearthstone channel, which I don't think some people know about. It's like kind of slip under their, but frankly it's starting to level out with Marvel Snap a little bit in regards to like views. And I've seen a boost in aone and, and it certainly decline in Marvel, Snap. So who knows how long the, the, the moral Snap will stay, number one. But, uh, you know, so like if, if Snap just went offline tomorrow, I would be fine. I would be able to pivot. You know, I have other projects and plans and things, right? Like, I'm not worried about that from like a financial or career standpoint so much. So I do wanna still spend time trying to support Snap and trying to find the fun in it.'cause I don't wanna abandon the, the players who are, who are doing the same, you know, like there are still a lot of people who have commitments to the game. Like, you know, you've built all these giant collections and, and variants and cosmetics and stuff. People are really in on this. And I, I, I don't think it would be right to just abandon that or, or you know, for sure give up on the community or the game itself. So I'm, I'm still planning to like. It. I think there will definitely be, at least for a while, an air of frustration a little bit. Just like anytime I see Kid Omega, I'm gonna be like, oh, great kid Omega. You know, like that stuff's gonna happen, but just trying to make the best of it, I guess. I think a lot of people want us to be these like beacons of, of hope and, and you know, representatives and voices for the community, which I think we all try to be to the extent that we can. Like, without we, it's not something we want to do necessarily, but we understand the relationship and where we are sometimes a voice for you guys. So we try, but it honestly, it's hard to be perfect with it and it's hard to figure it out. Like, this is not what we got into this for. We just wanted to have fun making videos and, and trying to be more than that sometimes is tough. We're all just, I think, doing our best. I see a lot of people get mad at like creators and how they respond to it and so on and so forth, and it's like, give people some grace on this. You know, it's like. We obviously don't want this either. Like we're trying to stand up for you guys, but, uh, I'll just keep on that path. Doing my best, being me, I guess, is the best I can do.

Cozy: 58:40

Especially us three. We're three tired dads over here. Like, we're for real. We're all three dads, you know, and it just hits different, it hits different when you have to like deal with this garbage on top of, on top of all of it. Alex, I want you to answer too, but I want to add it to this, like, what do you guys think the response is gonna be if we do have a new season pass plus pass with a new card attached to it? Alex, you're up buddy.

Alex: 59:09

I think that it's a, it's a disastrous circumstance to be releasing a card that is essentially a series four, I believe, behind the premium season pass paywall. Um, I think the timing couldn't be worse. I think it was ill advised from the get go, it's something that Cozy and I talked about on prior Snapchats. The issue with Marvel Snap is not, we need more cards. Um, they've misdiagnosed what the challenges were around this game. Releasing more cards and payrolling more cards is not a solution to any problem Marvel Snap presents and I think that it is only going to make this issue worse.'cause I think there's a whole lot of people out there that don't even realize that that fantastic car or whatever the hell it is, is gonna be behind a significant paywall on that season pass.

Cozy: 59:51

I wanna say there's no way they'd do that after this. But honestly, there's a, they would do it. They're gonna do it, they're gonna do it.

Regis: 59:57

Come on, don't be, they're obviously gonna do it. They're de gonna do it. They wouldn't even be able to pivot in time, but they're definitely gonna do it. Come on. I know, dude, I actually,

Cozy: 1:00:05

funny enough, I keep saying that people don't realize like they couldn't pivot if they wanted to at this point. This was written in stone, like a lot of these decisions are not like done if only a brief glimpse like Glen makes these cards six months in advance, I believe. Right? Or he like designs them or whatever. Like this stuff has been in the plans for a long, long, long time. And so I can tell you they weren't like last week like, Hey guys, what if we just did a season plus? Like what do you, they already do that. But I guess throw on the, the card now with it or whatever, even if it's a series four or what have you, which we've seen Mercury and other car. I mean it doesn't matter if it's series four, we could still do, you go crazy. For me personally, I think the best way I can relate to this, and I haven't even made my own video on this,'cause frankly it's just like I don't, there's. A lot too, but it's like if you had two jobs as just like a regular person and you went to one job where like they, they, you walk in every day, you work as hard as you could. You put out the best thing you possibly could, and you pour your heart and your soul into the game. Sorry, the job trying to keep the metaphor straight. And they don't even acknowledge your existence. Like, Ima if like you're working at Starbucks and like, you just not even notice, uh, and you're getting, gr good reviews things are going well. Like the response has been great. You know, you're told at the drive through, you're, you're a great employee there. We, we appreciate you. But then the, your boss has never even communicated with you. And then you go to another job, you have another job, you have another job that has just opened up and the moment you walk in the door it's like, we're glad to have you. What can we do? We appreciate you. And this is obviously, this is just speaking one for one for rivals, for Snap, but this was a lot of like. Dear God it was super evident. And when you look at it in games, it's different. Obviously. It's like, oh, one thing to the other. And I still play like Snap. I love Snap as a game. Now I'm a bit of an idiot. I wish I had the talent that Regis has and Alex of you guys just being able to turn on the camera. I gotta do these full motion art as picture productions, and, and it just takes a lot of time. Takes a lot of time to do this. And if I pivoted to anything less, I just, like, I do it for the fun of it. I'm a psychopath. I love editing and putting things together and like, that's just like that, that that's where I get my joy from this. And I re just, you say this best'cause you said this in the creator, uh, discord. When you sit me, did I see, did you see this? It's not even about like notice me or like give me money or any of that. It like, can you paint on this a little bit? Because if anyone can speak to this. Great is the person who's been somehow,'cause I at least got like, so I got, I got like at least like 5% of love. I was in like one thing I believe. Uh, and then I did the conquers, right. And that was, um, due for a number of factors. Regis, you have been

Regis: 1:02:52

I, okay. So just to, to clarify what you're talking about here. Like, you, you, you're saying that you've been treated, you feel like with more care and respect and attention in Marvel rivals as a creator than in Marvel, Snap, like Marvel Snap within with neglects. Yeah, with neglects creators. And I will say too, like Hearthstone for me, like even though I'm not really the horse zone guy, I don't make nearly as many uh, videos as I used to. It's the same story for me, right? Like, I constantly asking me how I'm doing, how are you feeling about the game, sending me assets and thoughts and inviting me to stuff. It's like, you know, they show a lot of like, care to their creators'cause I think they see value in us, right? And Marvel Snap has never, ever been like that to me. I've I've never actually been proactively reached out to, I've always had to make a connection myself. And like I said before I've talked to any of the given community managers, maybe less than five times for sure. I could count on one hand. Um, which I wanna be clear. Like, I, I think some people will hear this as like a woe is me, or like a, um, oh, these streamers are conceited. They think the world revolves around them or whatever. It's nothing like that. Like I'm actually pretty content to just do my thing and chill and vibe and like my channel's been quite successful. I don't really need help necessarily or anything like that. It just kind of always surprised me more than anything that, like, I am, I, I think I'm the most viewed creator probably in Marvel Snap. If you just look at it from a purely. Like metric standpoint, like he was on YouTube or whatever. You definitely

Cozy: 1:04:23

are my

Regis: 1:04:24

man. Yeah, yeah. Hundred percent definitely. I always worry, I always, I always worry like somebody like, no, actually, but, but you know, anyway, I just always thought it would make sense to like, have a relationship with me. You know, because if I ever like turned against the game or decided to like, you know, burn some bridges or whatever, I feel like I would have a little bit of weight if I like went out swinging and like could really damage the game and the reputation a little bit. It seems like it'd be good to maintain a relationship and keep me happy. Like they're really lucky. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not that kind of person. Like I just, you know, have fun playing the game or whatever. I'm not trying to leverage my weight like that at all. It's, I'm kind of lucky that, that somebody in that position is, is that way I think. So it always just kind of surprised me, like no one ever tried to like be friends with me or I not even like, get invited to stuff either.'cause I often would honestly probably like turn down a lot of invites and like, oh, send it to somebody smaller or whatever. Like, I'm doing fine, or I don't wanna travel'cause I got the toddler or whatever. Right? Yeah. Like, I probably would've turned down a lot of stuff. It's just, it, it, it just felt like, why aren't they more invested in this really, really, really valuable creator community?'cause it's not just me, right? Like, I think Cozy, you felt the same way in many cases. I've heard from a lot of other people that are like, Hey, how do I get involved with stuff? Like, how do I reach out to people? How do I get them to listen to me? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But like, people pay us a lot of money to promote their games. Right? Like too much. I've always felt like we get paid too. Well, frankly, like we get all these sponsors and stuff, like they see value in us talking about their games.'cause we have these audiences and people trust us and all this stuff, right? Like, we've built this up for me over, over 10 years now, almost. But Marvel Snap almost seems to like take it for granted. And it's not that we even want money. I don't want more money. That's fine. I mean, I take it of course, obviously, but like, that's not my goal in this. I just want them to listen to me. Like you guys have seen in the Creator Discord. I write these like insanely long messages and I spend hours by the way, reviewing them, editing them, making sure I'm saying what I want to say. Being very careful with my language, trying to frame it in a way that like, I think like corporate people will still like, respect it and, and value it or whatever, but still trying to be like firm with it as well. And most of the time I don't even get like a thumbs up or a heart or an acknowledgement or whatever from Marvel Snap. I have no idea if they even see them. Like how many of these messages have I left in the creator Discord over the last like two years, like 30, 50? I don't even know, like so many, I don't even know if they get seen. Like occasionally I'll get like a thank you for this message or whatever, but then, you know, I don't ever actually see any actionable changes based on this stuff. So for me it often just feels like I am completely disconnected from the Marvel Snap team, which, you know, I, I've had a few moments where they've said like, oh, sorry, you know, like, we'll reach out to you more or get you more involved, or whatever, which never gets followed up on, right? Like that never actually happened. So I'm not even really complaining for my behalf. It just feels like there's a real lost opportunity here where they could have better supported the game utilizing creators. And if it's not me, it's like, you know, there's other people and other opportunities, just like so much value basically is left on the table. In this world, I feel like that a lot of other people see and instantly recognize and try to leverage in powerful ways that Marvel Snap is left behind. So I guess that's my spiel on it. I don't, I don't know if that's a compelling concern, but I've always just been a little surprised, first and foremost, like, what's the deal here?

Alex: 1:07:42

Yeah, Regis, I want to echo that because, um, so there's a lot of things behind the scenes that people wouldn't realize. I actually feel the exact same way. I've had almost no communication with anybody from second dinner at all. The only people that I communicated even remotely was Nu verse. And they're no longer there. The people that I interact with at all, uh, I've had no interactions with pretty much anybody from second dinner in the longest time. And, um, a lot of people point to the fact that I was in a conquerors event, but what you wouldn't have known from behind the scenes is that I wasn't originally on the docket to be selected for that conquerors event. Mm-hmm. And it was Cozy that advocated. For me to be with him. People don't know that. And Cozy, thank you for that. I would never have had my shot on that single conquerors event if it wasn't for Cozy who actually went out of his way to advocate for me. So I want you guys to know that.'cause there's a lot of stuff people don't really know. Um, this whole situation's so frustrating because you have an amazing game and it seems as though we care so much about it and we can do so much to help and we're not given that opportunity to do so. And I want to echo what re just said. It's not about money. I, I, I look at, like, for instance, in in the Dota community, which is where I originally came from. Those creators are, um, a key component to the cog of the tournament machine, the internationals, the regional championships, all the things that they do. They are a core component of that community, and that has been built over decades. And I think that something like Doda or League or whatever, that those competitive kind of events and those large events actually keep people legitimately engaged. And it's, it's so great that the golden, uh, the golden gauntlets finally happening, but it took too long to get there. For instance, I know for a fact, and I, I, this isn't under IDA or anything like that, I know for a fact that second dinner had an opportunity to host an in-person event at one of the largest, gaming arenas, like gaming conventions in the world, and they just didn't take it. And I know that it was offered to them, like literally free of charge. Like, we will not charge you for the space. You get people here. You guys got the space, you have the stage, you have the people, and it was never followed up on. And that's heartbreaking to me because it felt like an opportunity that was lost and Cozy. And I spoke about this, it feels like years ago we're like, Snap craves a competitive, you know, uh, opportunities to play. And it just, it just never happened. And so ultimately, I, I certainly do feel that, our role to play in the Marvel Snap ecosystem has been underutilized. And I do echo, uh, Regis that I, I feel like I don't, I don't have an avenue to provide legitimate, proper feedback, and I don't know if they even want it. And it's kind of unfortunate because I feel like I've tried to be a good ambassador for this game for a couple. Couple years.

Cozy: 1:10:21

Well, it's, it's funny, Alex, it's funny you say this dude, because, and re just what you just said about, you know, luckily you're not the type of person that would like, you know, uh, if they wanted to just like turn the, the dime, man, they went three for three. Good god. All three of us, those type of guys. And at one point all three of us were Cal. Uh, rough math, long form, constant over 6 million views, at least 7 million views per month. 28 day rolling that was coming in to the game. That's a lot of eyeballs coming into one game. And if we were to take 7 million of those into a negative light would probably have done something. But that's just not, and here's the thing. It's not even about me or Regis or you, Alex, I think it's also the echo chamber of like, we are seeing, like every time we post videos, we see a lot of engagement of people's thoughts, their processes. Regis and I don't stream anymore, Alex, you do. So you see more stuff there, even where it's like. At the very least. I think one thing that creators are, it's not even our voice technically, but at least somebody who's a decent person is using their voice as a voice of many. And I think that's where it's like, man, if we got reached out to, there's so many things that I would've loved to say or loved to do. Uh, you know, I've seen someone say, oh, Cozy has been in the, uh, what was I in the sanctum sub toum video? I was Did the trailer for that? Nope. That was completely new verse. That's all who I talked to. And then they got, they left, they were gone. So that was my communication with them. Other than that, it's been a year plus. I think it was the conquerors event with you, which was also new verse gone. So the, my last true communication with that team was a couple years ago, the team there. Now I didn't hear anything from them for, I don't know, I think me and Reid just were actually at one point just cackling.'cause it was like month number eight where we didn't hear a single word from these people. Even a hello. Like even a, just, Hey, this is who I am. Nice to meet you. Like, and that just. Is bonkers for me as a person, but especially as a former person that was the director of sales and marketing positions. Like, I just couldn't even process it in, in thater, you know, form of the word you know, creator codes. There's so many things that like, I don't think we even pushed on back then too, that we certainly never got, going into it. What hurts me though is I know behind the scenes and what I was told year one is laughable. Like the stuff that was gonna be coming, the stuff that was gonna have provided for creators, for voice, for feedback, is that like, I, I wish I could even just go on a rant of what all that was gonna be. Uh, but it is, it, it's just kind of mind boggling at this point. And it only each and every, it's like whenever you leave, if you ever dated a crazy girl or boy and you, you look back a few months later and you're like, wow, they're still crazy, like, I'm glad that I left that. And not talking like a left Snap, but more of just like, man, it makes each month that I don't put out 20 videos a month easier for me. As much as it stinks too.'cause I can't say how much I get the itch to make stuff.

Regis: 1:13:17

No, man, I was just thinking like, I can't believe Snap, like, not like lost you, but like, you know, you, you've done a lot of rival stuff and like rivals instantly saw the value in you because I've always said like, you are like the ultimate like, spokesperson for the game. Like, so like buttoned up and professional and positive and like, like Snap could not have asked for a better like, YouTube representative person to like be the face of their game for them from a creator standpoint, you know, like, you know, whatever. I, I do okay too, but I'm like goofier and I'm not like, you're like so good at it, you know? And rivals just like literally already put you on tournament casts, you know, like you're literally the voice of rivals now. It took them no time to understand that and like. Instantly vault you to that level of success. And it's just like, what did, what was Snap thinking, dude? They had like the perfect dude. And, and, and it's, it's not just you. Like, you know, you and Alex have, have been a, like, staple of this community for so long with this show. Every week people, I hear like every comments all the time, oh, on the, on the show. And Alex said, Cozy said blah, blah, blah. You guys have just been such standout representatives for the game and I feel like neither of you have been utilized effectively. Like, it, it breaks my heart, Alex, to hear that he's just for whatever reason, I, it doesn't bother me that much that I'm left out, but it actually hurts me that you're left out. Like, that makes me so sad and frustrated'cause you're just like so likable and lovable and, and so well-spoken that it's ah, just like so many lost opportunities and so much frustration. It's just really been wearing me down this week. So I'm mostly just tired. I'm gonna do my best to keep having fun, but I'm just really tired. That's my, that's my takeaway message. I'm tired.

Alex: 1:15:00

Yeah, I'm exhausted too. It's been really hard. Um, it's been really hard seeing a lot of the messages coming through, whether they're live streaming or, uh, on YouTube. People saying that, you know, this was kind of the, the last straw and that they're done. Some people say, you know, Hey, like unsubscribing, but love your content. Hopefully see you on the next one type thing. But for me, my, my goal is to, uh, continue making Snap contents and because I, I do like the game but I also, this is something that's always been like, I want to, I wanna love content creation and I, I really legitimately do. And so I kind of see this as a challenge to, to perhaps try to take a couple chances here and there. Try to, you know, spread my wings a little bit, try to do some unique things that I've always wanted to do, but felt like I couldn't because I had to keep on the Snap cadence or something like that. I think that ultimately snap's gonna be okay, and I think that the game will continue to chug along. It might not be what it could have been but I'm gonna stick around and I'm gonna see it through,

Cozy: 1:15:54

you know, I only have so much bandwidth. And one non-negotiable. I've talked about this all the time. One non-negotiable for me is being a father and being a dedicated dad and being around all the time. And so, like, my wife knows this, talk to it all the time. I can make way more money. I could make way more constant. I could do way more things if I was a shit parent and I'm not gonna do that. I'm just not gonna do it. And, or a poor husband, like not on my cards. And so yeah, Snap had to take a big hit of that. And was a lot of that influenced by some of second, not some second in decision and communication and things around it. Absolutely. On that note, everybody, uh, hopefully you enjoyed what was I don't know. Mondays already suck, so hopefully you enjoy having yourself. Three guys here just. Uh, talking their hearts out. Regis dammit. We'd love to, to have you come on. I know you're a busy father man and uh, person over there yourself, but, uh, we'd love to have you here at any time. We just appreciate you coming on. Yeah. It's nice to be invited to something. Regis. No, you we almost did a tournament. We were like, we were brewing like in the early days. No, I, dude, oh, I actually forgot. I forgot that you just said that. Yeah. We

Regis: 1:17:03

kind of got distracted by other things, but we were actually cooking up a community tournament'cause we thought the game wasn't gonna do it. Yeah. It was good fi days. Yeah, dude. No I'm I Jess actually, the Snap community's been really good to me, like other creators and. Audience and everything. Of course. Like it, I feel very loved and involved and people say way too many nice things about me way too often. It's actually daunting sometimes. I'm just trying to live up to some of those expectations. But, uh, yeah, just having fun and I, I feel about the dad thing too, man. Like, it's, uh, that's why I stopped streaming, right? Like I, it's just easier to record and not have to be locked in for, for three, four hours for our schedule and for us, you know? But, um, same as you guys just wanna keep trying my best to have fun in the game and find the fun among all the shit sometimes, you know, sorting through some shit to, to, to pick out the fun is my goal. I think we'll be able to do that. But appreciate you guys having me. It's, uh, it's, it's a great joy. Again, you guys are just a, a beacon of, of fun and, and, and you know, appreciation, I guess in the Snap community. So it's an honor to be here.

Cozy: 1:17:57

We're two months from three years. Strong dude, or Yeah, yeah, two, two. Not missing a week for three years. That's such a stupid thing to say. That's crazy. That's absolutely crazy. Listen guys. Yeah, I encourage you. Have fun. Just like what re just said there, there's still plenty of fun to be, you know, you could get wrapped in the, the chaos, but also just like go out there, try to get some cubes, man, play some crazy decks. Go watch Regis's uh, videos. If you don't know Regis guys, I'm sure, yeah, if you're watching this, you know him. But go subscribe to the man, subscribe to Alex and uh, give us some love over there. Take my subscriptions, pour'em to them. Uh, and uh, anyway, guys, we appreciate you guys coming on and we'll catch you guys on the next Snapchat episode.