00:47:15 · Mark Pincus, John Coogan
[00:47:15] S6: There is no app connection. None of the things that enabled Zynga MySpace was started. I mean, YouTube was started on top of MySpace. People forget that. So there isn't an obvious way to jump start distribution, and I think, you know, VCs rightly wanna see something predictable. And so the small number a company called FOMO announced a big round last week, I invested in that along with Union Square Ventures. I only invested after they proved it and got the traction. Sure. [00:47:53] S1: Yeah. How how do you think vibe coding, agentic coding is going to change or is already changing game development? Because it feels like we should be seeing AAA games produced by solo developers. I don't know if that's more of a VC backable strategy or opportunity, but it feels like we're very, very close to some inflection point there. The indie dev community is already booming. But how do you think it'll play out? A thousand flowers bloom. The simulators are fun. But yeah, I'm just wondering if you think that there's like a business opportunity there or if it will just be more like the d to c boom where there were a ton of small brands. A couple breakouts, but by and large it was just that, oh, there's a ton of, you know, solo entrepreneurs on Shopify today, and that's great.
00:48:43 · Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[00:48:43] S6: Right. It's it's a it's a $280,000,000,000 industry that doesn't seem to have any innovation. You know, I think games have gotten really boring and have kind of stagnated. And I think it's because distribution's broken. Will AI change distribution? Probably on a pretty small level. The only place I think it could is enabling much faster testing of ideas like what some of the hyper casual game companies like a company called Rolliq that Zynga bought was brilliant at that. So they would say what was TikTokable. So they would figure out what's a TikTok meme. They made a game in a week called High Heels that became the number one game in the app store. So that happened. I don't see anyone really using AI effectively to do that. So then you get to, well, okay, AI can reduce the cost. Sure. And I think it is making headway in reducing the cost, but I don't think you get hits in games because of less cost. You get hits because of more dimensions you can innovate on. Yeah. And so I think you [00:49:58] S0: do think triple [00:49:59] S6: a, you know, will come down from a 100,000,000 to maybe 30,000,000. But but I don't I don't think that's going to spark growth in the market.
00:49:59 · Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[00:49:59] S6: a, you know, will come down from a 100,000,000 to maybe 30,000,000. But but I don't I don't think that's going to spark growth in the market. [00:50:09] S0: It's so fascinating that I can't think of a single even media asset game, anything like that, where AI created the hit factor that whatever. No. Like, we go back to the Harry Potter Balenciaga video that was one of the first AI videos that really went went super viral and people were like, woah, this is actually entertaining and Yeah. And it's always like the human that used the AI to do something that they wouldn't have done Yeah. If they had just had an idea pre AI because it would be like, well, I'm not gonna pay for all the CGI to do, you know. Mhmm. It would've just been way too much work. But the human still is the hit maker. Yeah. We still got it. [00:50:52] S6: Yeah. And even if It's awkward because when we were doing games, there was Flash, we were doing web games, and we were able to innovate and test really quickly and put things out in a day or a week. And now in the App Store and Unity, it's slower, but AI is really well suited for web languages, you know, and web gaming. Web gaming is 1,900,000,000 out of 280,000,000,000. So a lot of people are betting that Three. Js Yeah. Is going to unlock innovation and growth, but you're gonna have to see people embrace web gaming, which, you know, is is a tough bet. So
00:50:52 · Mark Pincus, Jordi Hays
[00:50:52] S6: Yeah. And even if It's awkward because when we were doing games, there was Flash, we were doing web games, and we were able to innovate and test really quickly and put things out in a day or a week. And now in the App Store and Unity, it's slower, but AI is really well suited for web languages, you know, and web gaming. Web gaming is 1,900,000,000 out of 280,000,000,000. So a lot of people are betting that Three. Js Yeah. Is going to unlock innovation and growth, but you're gonna have to see people embrace web gaming, which, you know, is is a tough bet. So [00:51:35] S0: What do you think app how how how would you how do you think Apple should approach vibe coding? It feels like an interesting interesting challenge. They're kind of I don't think they necessarily know. At least they have they don't necessarily know how they wanna approach it or they haven't made it clear yet. They've made it hard for these apps to you know, I think they kind of froze updates on a bunch of apps and said like, you know, we're just basically like saying like your business is like over until we figure something out. So clearly they wanna make money from it and they wanna protect users, which I think are both, you know, developers are gonna be annoyed at at, or at least good developers will be annoyed at at both of those things. But it seems like a tough one where users are clearly gonna want modular software that they can create and multiplayer experiences that they can imagine and then share with friends, but it feels like it's at odds with all of Apple's kind of principles.
00:51:35 · Jordi Hays, Mark Pincus, Tyler
[00:51:35] S0: What do you think app how how how would you how do you think Apple should approach vibe coding? It feels like an interesting interesting challenge. They're kind of I don't think they necessarily know. At least they have they don't necessarily know how they wanna approach it or they haven't made it clear yet. They've made it hard for these apps to you know, I think they kind of froze updates on a bunch of apps and said like, you know, we're just basically like saying like your business is like over until we figure something out. So clearly they wanna make money from it and they wanna protect users, which I think are both, you know, developers are gonna be annoyed at at, or at least good developers will be annoyed at at both of those things. But it seems like a tough one where users are clearly gonna want modular software that they can create and multiplayer experiences that they can imagine and then share with friends, but it feels like it's at odds with all of Apple's kind of principles. [00:52:34] S6: Yeah. A 100%. I mean, I don't think that there is a real incentive for Apple to do anything about that, and I don't think it doesn't feel like that's not the energy I get from Apple. It's not the the vibe is vibe coding. [00:52:51] S5: Yeah.
00:52:51 · Tyler, Mark Pincus, John Coogan, Nick Grossman
[00:52:51] S5: Yeah. [00:52:53] S6: Yeah. And and I I don't even see Apple doing anything to help distribution of the apps that, you know, are put out on their platform now. So I don't think I don't I just I have a hard time seeing them motivated to help, you know, people put out tons more apps. I mean, I think it's more likely that that logjam gets broken because somebody makes an app container that somehow Apple allows people to keep changing massive amounts of change of content inside, almost like a Roblox. But it's yeah. It's I it hurts my brain to figure out how that's gonna happen. And and Vibe coding, I I actually I'm I think Claude code, Codex, I think I think automating coding and using co working agents has obviously, you don't need me to tell you that has legs. I think that's going to go somewhere. But vibe coding almost feels like the missed start we had with blogging and Geocities where there was a moment where everyone was gonna make their own website, and they did. And then they just weren't very good. Yeah. And it didn't go anywhere. There was there weren't really websites that blew up Yeah. That I know that were built on top of like a Geocities or maybe I'm Yeah. Dating myself. You guys don't even remember those. [00:54:25] S1: Yeah. We we are like it feels like we're very close to being able to effectively vibe code an iOS app in the cloud, have it deploy it to TestFlight and you get that app back on your phone and close that loop entirely on your phone in an Apple compliant way. Now it couldn't go viral because it's not in the store. [00:54:50] S7: Right.