YouSaid · the spoken record

Niccolo de Masi

lines on the record: 96
first: 2015-12-28
most recent: 2015-12-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You can agonize it. You know, there's She certainly could, and I think there's some of the men that you've mentioned the rock, Vin Diesel. We've done Jason Statham already in a shooter game. But there's a broad, broad honor.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I get it. That's looking strong in beta. All right, okay, all right. All right, gotta have a Taylor Swift game, and then you can agonize it. She doesn't have a game. That's interesting. She could have such a fascinating game.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there are a lot of people that will. Yes, I get it. That's looking strong in beta. All right, okay, all right. We've got Britanny, we've got Bernie Spears, we've got Nicki Minaj, and then we've said that we've signed another approximately $350 million social followers on my last earnings call, how to announce who they are yet. So walks the space. There'll be some announcements.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only person doing this The best. Yeah, okay. So, you know, there's been Demi Lovatado, there's been Never seen the MM game. So, who else are you talking about? Nicki Minaj? I would like to play a Nicki Minaj.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Features in it that we worked very hard to bring out to ensure that there was differentiation with the rest of the landscape. Because whilst we have the number one celebrity game out there, and I think Katie Perry will turn out to be tied for that in the long term, we're not the only person doing this. There's other people, I mean, I wasn't the first to build a celebrity game. We're just the best. Yeah, okay. So, you know, there's been Demi Lovado, there's been Eminem, there's been Snoop Dogg, there's been never seen the Eminem game. Well, you probably haven't seen a lot of these. And the reason for that is, like with making movies, you can make a lot of movies, only so many hits you.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There will be costumes and outfits, but it's not a fashion-centric game. It's about how do you find the right people to work in the music business? How do you, of course, make a great album? How do you promote it? And this game has some unique...”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is drunk with her as a person. And this is about her journey as a person, ultimately. I see. From sort of wanting to be a musician. So it's not just changing.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“World musician at peak Why should I get? Do I have the time as a real issue, actually? Musicians like. Professional. I mean, she's Inefficiently kind of thing. It was quite remarkable. But I remembered it's the training, exactly. All right”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What her personal creative vision and flair is about. She's been a fantastic partner for voiceover work, video work, all this stuff, really, really remarkable, professional. I mean, she's used to doing costume stages in seconds on stage. We spent a day doing video and video work for the game, and I've never seen someone go through so many costumes so quickly and efficiently kind of thing. It was quite remarkable. It's the training, you know, exactly you do this on stage for tens of thousands of viewers at a time. And so what we've been endeavoring to do, obviously, is crack the music, the personal music gaming space. This is not a game about her music, nor is it a deal that was struck with her label.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we wanted to do was, of course, push into other genres, and we wanted to make sure that we did so with the premiere person, so to speak. Admittedly, it wasn't trivial, again, getting in touch with Katie's and her management team and walking her through what the potential could be because she's arguably the most popular person in the world, musician at peak, tremendous business in its own right. Do I have the time as a really issue, actually? With musicians like her at the peak of touring, how can I even roll with you? I can't do three or four emuls a day, you know, kind of thing. So that took some time for us to work through, as well as the creative vision. And it's been an analogous process, but a different one. I mean, Katie's, you know, she's incredible attention to detail, just like him, you know, huge involvement in narrative story arcs, what the features will be, what the game could be about.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Celebrity game. So we were looking for another genre than reality initially. And so we looked at the sports space, we looked at the music space. What you find when you start to look at the most popular people in the world is that actually women are much more adept at building and maintaining large social followings than men. So the top 10, 20 most popular, most followed people in the world are women, and they tend to be female musicians. Right, Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears, Taylor Swift. Exactly, exactly. You don't get down to men until you group them together. The rocks is not top 10. He's over 100 million. He's not top 10. One direction. One direction is the course that's a group. They're huge, but they're a group.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, there certainly was a peak. There was a peak when there were certainly many millions of people a day playing. There's less than that today, but I'll put it this way, the ratings on our game, if it were a TV series, would still be pretty interesting by all sort of cable channel. So you've moved to Katie Perry.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Access to Kim's world whenever you want, the average person's playing thirty minutes a day, actually, there's sort of five, six minute sessions is what you're seeing, or six, five-minute sessions, something like that, approximately.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what we're trying to do obviously is pick people that have been around a while and we think are on a positive trend in their own right. And Kim's social funding was growing even before we partnered. Although I think the game has helped, frankly, grow her celebrity social following from 70 million when we first met to something like 130 million today. So I think it can be a positive effect. But also, you know, we're looking to turn these games into frankly permanent services, sort of almost like permanent cable TV channels, permanent, call it late night TV maybe. It's the chem TV show, but instead of just Sunday, 30 minutes, you know, an hour, you have to tune in or you miss it or record it. Effectively, what these games are doing is giving you the last language.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So from the first, let's call it alpha build, when you can see what's going on in the game, she's been involved. I mean, she approves, and I do it directly with her, and we trade.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She thought that we had captured her character perfectly for the icon that we showed her, what she looked like in the game. And she understood what the stardom game would mean. And she understood it was a good fit. And she also understood that this could be something that we could make into a tremendous phenomenon if we could properly connect her sort of real world with what the game updates would be.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And believe it or not, those are the criteria that we've continued to roll with, as we've signed up people like Katie Perry, Brittany Spears, Nicki Minares, there's a whole roadmap of this. We're big believers and we're this trend can go because ultimately if you have 100 million social followers, well, you know, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat aren't monetizing this for you. You're building equity value for them. They're not doing anything return for you other than providing a broadcast platform. Glue is effectively monetizing someone's social following someone's brand. And Kim got that really in the first phone call we had right off the bat.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just keeps growing. Talking about so I was looking for somebody. Initially we chatted in, let's say, sort of the middle of 2013. Game came out June 22nd, 14, so we're sort of 18 months into it. And it takes about a year to build a good game, as I'm sure you've heard. I was looking for somebody who had a large social following, so potential to drive a big audience space. But the two other factors, and she does, the two other factors were actually equally important to us, which are there's the aspiration of your fan base. Fit the core game mechanic that we already know monetizes. And then the third thing is do you want to do this? Will you be a good partner? Because the history of all IP partnerships is some horror stories out there, as I'm sure you've heard, right?”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So What does that mean? Because you were just talking earlier about the idea of things come and go. The Kardashians don't seem to come and go. They seem to stay. It just keeps growing. Why did you think of her? What in that thing that you're to the concept you're talking about?”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I actually didn't approach anybody else other than her for this particular game, but I actually took the same approach for a number of other partnerships that we struck. You know, we built a James Bond game, we built the Terminator game, we built a Mission Impossible game, and we built a Kim game. Nothing's worked nearly as well as obviously the Kim partnership. And a lot of that I put down to this personalization of media and the fact that she's a brand, she's a promoter, but she's also able to uniquely twist the physical and the virtual worlds together, and that can't be done with static IP. So I think this personalization of media will continue to trump static Hollywood brands in the interactive gaming space.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I was looking for as a future duration of that game was a way to broaden out the appeal. If you can take a game with a great lifetime value in our history and you can 10x the audience base, you're on to a potentially fantastic. Long lifetime game that can be marketed far and wide and taken a life of its own. Believe it or not, I went down to Hollywood, so to speak.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we never tried it to a celebrity before. We'd built it a couple of times before without any brand at all other than ourselves. Stress them, start them, work your way from nowhere to somewhere. And we noticed in 2012, when we put out two prior versions of it, that it had a small audience base, but it had some pretty loyal, generally female fans who retained and who monetized pretty solid lifetime values, frankly.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She's been a great partner. She's an incredible businesswoman, and I think this partnership between Kim and I has worked well at a personal level in terms of how we brainstorm, how I get approvals from her in short amounts of time. And she recognized when I first brought the idea to her that this could be good for not just her brand, but glues ultimately.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, lately that's been true. But more broadly, let's look at genres were big in shooters, time management games, sports racing, and obviously celebrity games affect.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. And so, what's happened in Hollywood was the same as the music business, which is you have consolidation and you have master labels, master, you know, call it film studios that have a portfolio and a big catalog, and they're diversified. Same thing has to happen in gamespace. Glue and EA take this strategy in the West, they're pretty broad portfolios, because I figure, I can't predict if this is the year of the zombie shooter or next year is, but I'm going to build a zombie shooter and I'll also build a time matching game. So”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There you go. Zombie. That's true. And so my perspective has always been catching consumer sentiment and zeitgeist, that's a tricky thing for companies to deliver on relentlessly.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Physics puzzle game, you want to call it that basically. And it had its moment and a very big moment at that. They're capitalizing well on it in the broader sense of the word. The film might do well. They're trying to sort of brank chat. We'll see, comic books, et cetera. Maybe exactly. Could be the moment or knock the moment.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say always, but being generous to firms that are in one genre, it changes the questions how quickly and can you migrate your experience in the case of games that are updated every week or two relentlessly, where do you migrate your experience to? Angry Birds didn't migrate. It's still, you know, it still effectively an avian physics.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or what happens? Well, so I think what often happens for companies that haven't built up a culture of we're going to be effectively a design learning production factory and we're going to be broader than one game one genre is inevitably tastes can change. Consumer sentiment does change.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rovio had a reburgh super game. And I remember when that one came out and I had lots of investors asking why I couldn't just ship that. And I said, trust me, it'll never be repeated. Sure enough, you know, it hasn't been repeated.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rovia's a one hit wonder. Classic one hit wonder issue. And glue, you know, when I joined Glue, I was cognizant of one, can I own more the value chain? Sure. Two, I never want to be a one-hit wonder business. So we've always shipped double digit numbers of games a year. And that makes us a little.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tough to do publicly. So I have a lot of sympathy for Werzengas because I did the same thing, albeit in the smartphone feature phone space. And then, of course, once you get past that, for me, it was 2014 really. 2013, a little bit, mostly 14, 15, you start to grow again because you don't have this legacy business that has to be compensated for effectively. So when I stand back in the overall gaming space,”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and they have to replace all that revenue. Glue had to replace all of our feature phone revenue with smartphone revenue, but I did it frankly quite aggressively in 2010, 11, and 12. So I ran off the feature phone business in three years, and we built in smartphone business.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. All their marble. A billion dollars of Facebook canvas revenue running off to a lot less potentially, I don't know what you think about Facebook's business, but I think mobile will keep growing and Facebook Canvas will probably keep shrinking for everyone involved. So that's sort of internal define.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so Zynga, I would argue the mobile hasn't been the up and down, it's been the up. The Facebook's been the down. Right. So that business.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sort of PC culture in Korea and China, and some of the phone culture you've got in those markets. And so I think you're seeing a shift in the power and the profits of this industry, both today and for the next 10 years towards those markets.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People who don't. I mean, the center of gravity for all gaming, in my opinion, is moving to Asia. Tencent is actually Glue's biggest shareholder. They put $126 million. In April, about $6 a share, and they got one board seat for that. You've seen a number of those deals happen. You had all put money into Kabam. More of the capital is flowing now from East West. From Asia here. Korea. Korea, China, particularly active. Japan was active 2010, 2011. NG Moko opened faint. But most recently, it's been China and Korea, I think. You had NetMarble effectively take a stake in SGN and LA. So I think that what's happening not only on phones, but also in the PC space, is that whilst console is not going away, it's sort of here to stay. The latest generation shown that for the West, console will not supplant”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, lose about 800 people. We ship about 10 ish games per year. We have offices all over the world, and we're NASDAQ listed.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Exactly. Endless licensing royalties, approvals, etc. We own racing rivals. So the vast majority of Lou's portfolio is actually wholly owned IP. Believe it or not, the celebrity games are sort of the exception to the rule. And the exception that we're willing to make because, in my opinion, people, sort of personalization of media, is an enduring trend. And what you get from a person that you don't have from static IP, even if it's good static IP like Marvel or Star Wars, is we have this tremendous social base that's effectively inbuilt promotion. And it's a living and breathing intellectual property as opposed to something that has been fixed in time.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, let's see. So, when I joined Glue Late 09, early 2010, Android didn't even have purchase in the store. So that started March 11. So it was early days of the store, and then it became, in our purchases, were obviously the revolution on the App Store. And so we threw all of our energy glue behind becoming a free-to-play games company, becoming a smartphone games company, and actually trying to do more original IP in the portfolio mix.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so glue when I joined was still building feature phone games, what we'd call today a dumb phone game. So color was an innovation. Any semblance of 3D was exciting in 2005, 67. And when I joined Glue, we made three big pivots. We had to get out of the feature phone business and the smartphone business, out of the paid business. Which post I.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you have twenty years of effectively exciting revolutions to be had when you think about emerging markets and developed markets. But I've got to be able to own much more the value chain. Right. And Gaming's been the seeker of that for my career. So Glue is my second games company, second public company, third mobile media business I've run in the past 11 years.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's spot on. And at the time, I was dealing with the same sort of thing, had a public company in London called Monster Mob Group PLC, which was dealing with the same things that Pandora and Spotify tackled today in terms of there's always another performing rights association that's going for their hands. So I got into gaming because I went, look, I do believe in the future of computers in people's pockets everywhere.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, I wasn't. I was working in the mobile music space at the time, actually, 15 years ago. Which was also very crude. It was early as well, yeah. And I went from music, I run a public company in the UK, in the music space 10 years ago. I go to the games business actually because I recognized when the iPhone was announced, 907, that there probably wasn't going to be any margin left for someone like me who was trying to make a profit off sitting between labels and carriers. Right, absolutely. It turned out to be exactly correct. I'll tell you.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, you have effectively last generation console power in your pocket. Everyone's carrying around effectively a computer with them.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's true. And one of the reasons for that, I think, is that the game business is pretty young. You know, the film industry is the mobile game industry. Mobile games is pretty young. Even consoles, relatively young compared to the film business. So I think 100 years from today, hopefully people will have heard of Glue the same way they've heard of MGM and so on. We've been going 14 years, actually. And Public since Mark Show 7. I'm just finishing my sixth year. And there's, of course, been a tremendous amount of, frankly, development evolution and endless Moore's law-like pioneering the game space on cell phones the past 14 years. When I started in this industry, a black and white snake game on your Nokia device was considered cutting edge.”
2015-12-28 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Niccolo de Masi, Glu CEO · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT