Gamified Newsletter - Episode 152
A note from Sam
WE ARE BACK! Gamified is now on Youtube with a brand new video format that we poured our hearts into. I hope you feel the same Gamified energy we had on Spaces, with added benefit in a few key areas now that we're on video.
Stacked panel this week: Chris Hattersley, Warren Woodward, Will Spangler, Gnoc, Jonah Blake, and Oliver Moroney.
▶ Watch Episode 152 on YouTube
We are still heavily in the experimentation phase, so if you see anything you love or hate, please drop a comment or message me directly with the feedback. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend in the Games industry who wants to be informed without being bored.In Today's Newsletter
- Pokemon Go's 30 billion image dataset - red flag or green flag?
- Xbox Copilot - bullish or bullshit?
- Did Slay the Spire 2 leave money on the table at $25?
- GDC's "Festival of Gaming" rebrand - buy or sell?
- NVIDIA DLSS 5 - sentiment scores from the panel
- Explain Like I'm a Shareholder: Why Roblox?
Pokemon Go Built a 30 Billion Image Dataset - and They're Selling It
143 million people thought they were catching Pokemon. Turns out they were building one of the largest real-world visual databases in AI history.
Niantic disclosed that eight years of player photos and AR scans produced a dataset of 30 billion images - landmarks, storefronts, parks, sidewalks, every angle, every lighting condition. They're now selling that data to power visual navigation AI for delivery robots.
Red flag or green flag?
Jonah - ambivalent: "It doesn't matter, right? People are still going to play. It's not like they're going to care." He pointed out DoorDash announced the same week that they'll pay people to photograph their own houses and submit images - which somehow feels worse than just catching Pikachu in your living room.
Will - RED FLAG: "It's that flag you see in dystopian movies that's all tattered, on top of a pile of dead bodies." His concern isn't delivery robots - it's the precedent. Companies will increasingly exist solely to curate data for AI models. Niantic is the first wave.
Warren - RED FLAG: Pokemon Go revenue is way down from its peak. Scopely got gobbled up by the Saudi sovereign fund. Pokemon Go got gobbled up by Scopely. "Someone's got an earn-out and needs to grow revenue. You don't sell player data for a healthy and growing game."
Chris - GREEN FLAG (with caveats): "Nobody cares about their privacy. We've been handing this data to Facebook and Instagram for years. This isn't new."
Oliver - GREEN FLAG (for awareness): It's a wake-up call for consumers. "I'm glad this came out because it reminded people of what this stuff can actually do."
Gnoc - GREEN FLAG (for Niantic): Dropped the history lesson of the episode:
"Niantic was founded by John Hanke - the guy who started Keyhole, a geospatial data company absorbed by Google. Hanke then ran Google Maps, Google Earth, all geospatial functions within Google. He spun out Niantic - a company named after a whaling vessel famous for circumnavigating the globe. This was always a geospatial data play. It just had a Pokemon wrapper on top of it."
That right there is the kind of context that changes everything. Niantic didn't pivot to data collection. They've been a data company from day one.
I asked the panel whether this could actually lead to a golden era - if data monetization replaces microtransactions, do players finally stop getting pinched?
Chris's answer was perfect: "I think it's a green flag in that context. But they're going to pinch you anyway. Get rid of that fantasy."
He's right. They will absolutely do both.
Xbox Copilot - Bullish or Bullshit?
Microsoft announced a gaming Copilot for Xbox at GDC. Voice-activated AI that pulls from your Xbox profile, play history, achievements, and real-time screenshots to give you tips mid-game. No alt-tabbing. No pausing to Google a walkthrough.
Then the patents came out: Microsoft filed for a feature where AI temporarily takes control of a tough section of your game and hands it back when you're ready.
One more thing: this was announced one week after Xbox's new leadership said they'd avoid "AI-generated slop in games."
Gnoc - BULLISH: The surprise vote. "People are not reading what was actually announced. The examples are: 'Hey Xbox, what should I play tonight?' and 'What should I craft with these materials?' It's a voice navigation tool. Xbox Record - we've all said that phrase a dozen times. This is just taking that a step further."
"The father of two kids who comes home after a long day and has 60 minutes to play doesn't want to spend 55 of those minutes figuring out how to leave the room he's in."
Warren - BULLISH (on the concept, not the branding): The spirit of it is actually awesome - stop breaking immersion to check your phone for a guide. But wrapping it in the Copilot brand guarantees the toxic reaction. "Ease the features in. Treat it more like a companion where you still have to drive."
Jonah - BULLSHIT: The only version he'd use? One that roasts you. "Dude, I watch you play Elden Ring - you fucking suck. It would just grief you while you're live streaming. THEN people will use it."
Chris - BULLSHIT: "Where the fuck is Cortana? They own Halo. For God's sake." Terrible first AI move for Xbox's new leadership. Copilot already has a bad reputation as a dev tool.
Oliver - BULLSHIT: Fears the curiosity of gaming - the thing that makes games games - gets stripped out once an AI can solve everything for you.
Will - BULLSHIT: "You'll ask how to get out of a room and it'll give you the game manual answer instead of actually how you're supposed to do it."
And then Gnoc dropped what I think is the real reason this exists:
"A bunch of boomer bankers and private equity owners are buying any stock that uses the word AI because they don't want to be left behind. The boomers' last game was Pac-Man. They think all the kids will use it. Price goes up. It's the same thing we did in crypto. It's a puppet now."
Did Slay the Spire 2 Leave Money on the Table?
Slay the Spire 2 launched at $25. Already sold 3 million copies. One of the best-reviewed games of 2026. Over/under $35 - could they have charged more?
Warren - UNDER: "At $25, this is a hell yeah game you recommend to every friend. At $50, you're not recommending it to anyone. The K-factor at this price point is insane."
Gnoc - UNDER: "The idea of how much could we have milked from the consumer belongs in Triple-A gaming, and we see how that's been going for them."
Will - UNDER: "It's Slay the Spire 1.5. Same thing with a few additions. At $25, that's great value. At $35, I'd expect eight characters and a fundamentally different experience."
Jonah - UNDER: Small team, ~$75M gross, low expenses. Divide the net by 10-20 people and every one of them can retire. "The price is irrelevant when the math already works."
Chris - UNDER: "People consume 130 videos a day on TikTok and buy two Triple-A games a year. We need to get the price-value right so people can be consistent gamers."
For perspective: you can purchase every game Ed McMillan has ever shipped for about 60% of the cost of this year's Call of Duty.
GDC's "Festival of Gaming" - Buy or Sell?
GDC 2026 rebranded as the "Festival of Gaming." 20,000 attendees, down from 30,000. Tickets tripled to ~$1,000.
As someone who attended the last three years, I can confidently say I did not see a single sign of said festival.
Chris - SELL (but doesn't care) - never buys a pass anyway ("that's strictly for punters"). Said the quality of attendees was way higher this year because of the smaller crowd.
Will - SELL: "Every person I met was busy, driven, and motivated." His spicy prediction: Xsolla might effectively replace GDC. "If you didn't know it was GDC, you would've thought it was a Xsolla conference."
Jonah - SELL: "Give it 2-3 years. GDC will not exist. It'll die like E3." Epic has Unreal Fest. Roblox has their own conference. The anchor tenants have left.
Warren - SELL: International sentiment toward the US is tanking. European studios are actively skipping GDC because they don't feel comfortable traveling here.
Gnoc - SELL: "Festival of Gaming is directionally correct in the same way that piling a bunch of meat on bread is directionally correct. But what's actually happening is GDC went from Firehouse Subs to Subway."
Oliver - SELL: "The festival narrative is not true to what GDC is. It feels like GDC was trying to pivot to what Gamescom is. And that's just not what GDC is."
It's GDC's 40th anniversary and nobody even knew. It was on the bottom of one pamphlet. Complete fumble.
NVIDIA DLSS 5 - The Most Hated Tech Demo of 2026
Jensen Huang called it "a generational leap." Showed Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, Resident Evil - all rendered in hyperrealism. YouTube comments were near 100% negative. Bethesda immediately walked back their Starfield implementation.
7.5 Gnoc: "The version you're seeing right now is the worst version you'll ever see of this product."
6 Jonah: "The best games don't have the best graphics. They have the best art style."
3 Will: "Soulless games will use it. Soulful games won't. That tells you everything."
Warren: "This is going to be one of the last times anyone ever talks about this. It's just a tool."
Chris: "For a thousand years every gamer wanted realistic graphics. Now they get the most realistic graphics of all time and they're crying about it. They're going to complain, then use it, then secretly say it's awesome."
Will's wildest take: "The real unlock is you won't even need to play FIFA anymore. It'll be AI-generated fake games realistic enough to gamble on. Coming straight out of Stake or Polymarket. The world's burning - let's gamble on fake FIFA."
Explain Like I'm a Shareholder: Why Roblox?
The numbers are staggering:
- 67% of all non-China gaming growth in 2025
- $4.9 billion in revenue
- 102 million average daily active users (Q4 hit 144M)
- 123 billion hours engaged - more than Steam, PlayStation, and Fortnite combined
Chris: "It's the only gaming stock worth owning other than Take-Two. It's the closest thing to a gaming ETF. People keep saying we need a new platform. We have one. It's called fucking Roblox."
Will: "Roblox works as a stock because it's not a game company - it's a tech company." Public company pressures are killing game studios. Roblox sidesteps all of that because it's a platform, not a publisher.
Gnoc: Flagged two real risks: age migration (65-70% of users are under 18 - real chance they outgrow it) and CEO risk (Baszucki has repeatedly said he wants to turn Roblox into a dating platform, to which every sane person has responded: "what the fuck are you talking about?").
Warren (bear case): Despite being the highest-grossing gaming platform, Roblox lost $1 billion last year. Forward PE of 192x. A LOT of future perfection baked in.
Chris's rebuttal: "It's conservative accounting. They're throwing off massive cash flow. They're not in danger of going out of business."
🏆 MVP: Will Spangler
Three votes. Will used his moment to announce Game Credit - a new org helping indie devs prepare for publisher conversations, from marketing to branding to intro meetings.
Will's closing thought: "Gaming's in a down slump because we're adjusting. Indies are filling the vacuum Triple-A left behind. People are going to learn how to pick their games. Indies are going to learn how to make the games people want. It's going to be a beautiful horizon."
That's 152. See you next week.
▶ Watch Episode 152 on YouTube
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